Not sure what took so long, but LinkedIn had added company profiles. Just like there are profiles for users, there are now profiles for the companies that LinkedIn users work for.
Well, actually, I kind of know what took so long for LinkedIn to roll out company profiles. This isn't a user-generated, or even a company effort where anyone can go in and edit the company profile data. LinkedIn has taken six engineering, product and operations teams and iterated the company profiles based on LinkedIn's own data, including recent promotions and hires, search, and analytics in order to create these company profiles, which act as an integrated and interactive aspect of the LinkedIn network.
That being said, each company's relevance is immediately made available to you as a LinkedIn user, starting with the very way in which you're able to find companies. An icon will now appear beside a company's name, wherever that company's name appears. Click on this icon, and you'll be directed to its profile (or...you could just do a search for the company you're looking for). That's all fine and dandy, but this is LinkedIn we're talking about here. Things are all about business.
So once you view a certain company, you'll also see the people in your own network that work at that company. Beside their name, you'll also see the number of degrees they are away from you within the larger LinkedIn network. For each company, you'll also see new hires, recent promotions and changes, and those individuals who have been in the News section recently.
Now that you've gotten a glimpse of what's going on with the people at a given company, how about finding out what's going on with the company itself? LinkedIn is also providing you with a set of stats to learn more about each company that's profiled on the site, including the number of LinkedIn users that are currently employed by the company, as well as related companies. The information provided in the Key Statistics section is personally non-identifiable, so there shouldn't be too much worry on your part with the new profiles features.
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