LinkedIn Introduces ‘Mention’ Feature For Connected Conversation

LinkedIn announced Thursday an addition of a new feature where LinkedIn members can mention the name of a person or a company in their status updates and conversations.

Now LinkedIn members can have more connected conversations than ever before with the new Facebook-like feature, which allows adding the name of a person or a company in their status updates and conversations. Angela Yoonjeong Yang, associate product manager at LinkedIn, wrote in a blog post that all English-speaking members will be able to enjoy the new feature during its testing phase. Eventually the "mention" feature will be launched globally so all LinkedIn registered members can have engaged conversations.

"We're excited to introduce a new way for you to engage with your network through the ability to mention your connections and companies in conversations on LinkedIn," Yang wrote.

The introduction of the new "mention" feature replicates what is widely used in other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It allows all LinkedIn members to have an engaged conversations by just naming the person, who will be notified. If a member wants to link a person or a company in his conversation, all that needs to be done is start typing the name of that specific person/ company and select the one from the options in the drop-down menu.

After posting the comment/ status update, the specified person or the company will receive a notification email alerting them that they have been mentioned. Members can only mention the connected LinkedIn users or other members who are a part of the discussion on the LinkedIn homepage.

"We are currently testing the ability for members to directly mention each other in professional conversations on LinkedIn," a LinkedIn spokesperson said to The Next Web. "This test is part of our ongoing efforts to help members further engage with their networks in meaningful ways across the LinkedIn platform."

The addition of a new feature by LinkedIn is an effort to offer meaningful conversations to all its members. LinkedIn earlier made some advancement in its site by implementing ideas similar to what Facebook and Twitter use. LinkedIn's endorsement feature can be compared with Facebook's "Like" and prior to that LinkedIn introduced a "follow button" to all brands like Facebook and Twitter and updates from those brands appear on the users' LinkedIn feeds.