LinkedIn Connected: Your New Personal Assistant

LinkedIn has a new app called Connected that aims to connect you with the people you know through LinkedIn in a whole new way.

Using Connected

If you use the regular LinkedIn app, you can see your profile, updates, and friends that you have already connected with. Downloading the new “Connected” app created by LinkedIn lets you know a little bit more about those friends. This app aims to provide you with relevant information about the people you’ve already connected with through the social network. Information like a person’s birthday, how many kids they have, where they live, how you met them, and so on.

Connected could be a great way to prep for a meeting, which is the app’s original intention. Often, remembering things about the person that you are going to meet (like the names of a person’s kids) can bring a meeting to a whole new level. But, sometimes we forget those small details, and that’s the gap that “Connected” is trying to fill.

Additional Features

The Connected app will also let you know when a person has updated their LinkedIn profile, when milestones have been reached, and when you should congratulate someone in real time. For example, if someone on your “Connected” list has just received a promotion, you will be notified instantly, so you can reach out and congratulate that person.

LinkedIn purchased the app “Connected” back in 2011, but this is the first we hear of the social networking company actually using the technology. LinkedIn has noted that most people check the network between 6am and 10am every morning to read updates and to gain relevant information, and the Connected app would provide those details in an instant without the need to actually open up the main LinkedIn app. Creating a separate app for the purpose of making connections simpler is a great idea for LinkedIn, and for those networkers that use LinkedIn to make business connections.

Availability

The new LinkedIn Connected app is available for iOS right now. Simply head to the App Store, download the app, and get connected. You should begin seeing updates and getting alerts relatively quickly, and you will sound like you really care about a connection when you start noticing those small details (but, really, your app will do all the noticing for you!).

To some, apps like this one take the human out of relationships, but in other ways being reminded of these small details can bring relationships closer together. Remembering details about others used to be an art reserved for very talented business people.

Now, that art can be chalked up to an app that does it all for you – or for anyone that takes the initiative. If you have a meeting coming up and someone knows specifics about you – question the app! Or, just roll with the punches – that person did take the time to read the updates after all, right?

Have you used LinkedIn’s Connected app yet? How did it go?