Friday, August 29, 2008

LinkedIn Groups now have discussions

Now this is an interesting development for LinkedIn...

LinkedIn have added a new feature which means you can now have discussions within LinkedIn Groups.

To me, this is the best thing that's been added since LinkedIn Answers, as it adds the ability to create real value from like-minded business people.

Since LinkedIn opened up the ability to create your own Group the number has grown rapidly. However, previously, LinkedIn Groups were simply a way of extending your reach to people with similar interests. You could contact them directly through the group (if they allowed it) but the group itself didn't actually do anything on LinkedIn.

With the new changes you can start discussion threads (which look similar to LinkedIn Answers) and these discussions can be sent to all members as a digest email (similar to the Yahoo! Groups).

Now it'll be interesting to see how these groups evolve as members can communicate with everyone in the group.