LinkedIn announces a slew of changes, bringing bots to provide suggestions and launching a ‘meet up’ feature

In an email sent out to users of LinkedIn, Microsoft is announcing a slew of changes and improvements to LinkedIn. With these changes, the company will be adjusting its Privacy Policy and User Agreement to clarify certain clauses and add additional sections.

The first two of the changes affects users’ profiles. LinkedIn profiles will now be visible to ‘service partners’, in addition to them already being indexed by search engines. Service partners will be able to find profiles more easily to deliver opportunities (such as job vacancies) to you. Additionally, LinkedIn will begin offering suggestions to add accomplishments to your profile (such as patents or publications). These suggestions will be generated through publicly available information, both on-and-off of LinkedIn.

The final of the two updates delivers two new features for users, aimed at making LinkedIn that little bit more social. Automated systems (dubbed bots) will use messages you send through the service to suggest responses to messages for you, meetings and ice breakers, so that you type less, but say more.

Finally, Microsoft is adding a ‘meet up’ feature to LinkedIn, which is similar to Facebook’s version, where users will be able to opt-in to the meet up service so you can see when people in your network are nearby and offer to meet up. LinkedIn hopes this will be used at conferences or public gatherings to meet those you’ve made a connection with.

The Privacy Policy and User Agreement will be updated on June 7, 2017. It is not clear whether these features will go live at the same time or shortly after, as the policy changes pave the way for Microsoft being legally permitted to launch them.

Let us know what you think to these changes in the comments below!