Revamp Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn, the social networking site aimed at professionals and business use (i.e., no Farmville, mercifully) has just added a handy new feature: the ability to reorder the appearance of your profile. (Hat tip: Web Worker Daily). Until now, all profiles have been locked into the same framework and therefore looked more or less indistinguishable from one another.

Here is a short video showing how it works:

I've half-joked in the past that LinkedIn is a gateway drug to actual social networking.

It is professionally safe (even in the conservative world of law practice there are few people left who will look askance at you for using LinkedIn) but it also has been a bit of a snooze. More like a static resume/rolodex -- for lawyers under the age of, say, 30, here is a description of a rolodex -- on the internet than anything else. Lots of people sign up for LinkedIn, create an incomplete profile, add a couple of contacts and then promptly never check in again. (In stark contrast to Facebook, which has 400 million users, 175 million of whom log into Facebook daily.)

The ability to reorder your profile, while a small change, is another step forward for LinkedIn which has added features over the past months that make it more customizable, interactive and interesting. There are LinkedIn groups which often have their own discussion boards and news feeds, there are applications that allow users to feed in their travel information, blog posts, Twitter feeds, and more.

If you are used to Facebook, using LinkedIn still feels a little like going from a Vegas casino to a the reading room at the New York Public Library, but that ain't all bad. If you haven't checked it out yet, give it a look-see.

And send me an invite to connect with a note that you read this on my blog and I'll be happy to be a part of your digital rolodex.