LinkedIn Influencers: A New Follow Feature for LinkedIn Users
The special group of LinkedIn influencers includes people like President Barack Obama, GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, President and Editor-in-Chief at The Huffington Post Media Group Arianna Huffington and LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner. Like Twitter, people can follow the group of influencers for regular updates. Unlike Twitter, updates aren’t limited to 140-characters and the communication is designed to be business-related and in long form, very much like a blog post or regular article.
“’Our goal is to always make sure that there’s high quality,” says Dan Roth, executive editor at LinkedIn. “People come here for a purpose. They’re at work or thinking about work. It’s not about their personal lives.”
LinkedIn will rank the new group’s ability to engage the social networking site’s audience by analyzing views, likes, comments and shares that are visible to all users. Influencers will rank in the top 10 and bottom 10. Rankings will also act as a self-regulating feature. The new LinkedIn influencers feature promises to further engage users of LinkedIn, and keep them coming back to the popular social network regularly.