LinkedIn Polishes Its iPhone App Into A More Facebook-Like Gem

Following a bit of planned iTunes Connect downtime for the holidays, LinkedIn came out with the latest version of their iPhone app today. As you might expect from a 3.0 release, the app has been much improved, namely in its user experience. In fact, it looks a lot more like Facebook’s iPhone app now — which we’ll forgive, since that’s an excellent app.

As you can see, there is a new main screen that features 12 main buttons. Yes, this is just like the new Facebook app main screen that features big buttons. With LinkedIn’s you’ll get easy access to “All Updates,” “Status,” “Profiles,” “Discussions,” “Connections,” “Favorites,” “Inbox,” “Invitations,” “Recents,” “Reconnect,” “In Person,” and “Themes.” Of these, the Reconnect, In Person, and Themes areas are entirely new. Reconnect allows you to find people you likely know on LinkedIn with the click of a button. In Person lets you use the iPhone’s Bluetooth to easily swap contact information with any other LinkedIn iPhone use you happen to be nearby at a conference or event. And Themes allows you to change the color of the main screen icons — you can choose pink, orange, gold, and a bunch of other crazy colors to ugly-up your app to your heart’s content.

Previously, the app featured a more standard bottom-bar iPhone navigation where you could switch between updates, your inbox, search, and other elements. This new layout gives you access to a lot more information quickly. The updates areas (All and Status) has also been been made more Facebook-like as each now features a user profile picture next to each update. You can also now comment on each of these updates right from within the app — again, yes, just like Facebook.

It’s also now very easy to “star” any profile to mark it as a favorite, to give you easy access to it. Doing this also creates a filtering mechanism for the update streams.

Find the 3.0 version of the LinkedIn app, available for free in the App Store here.