I’ve had a LinkedIn account for a few years now. Although it has been valuable in past job searches and for networking purposes, I’ve always felt as though it was missing something. The launch of LinkedIn’s new feature, Signal, is a definite step forward in the company’s progress.

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, it’s a networking site. It allows users to add friends and create professional profiles detailing work history, talents and relevant interests. As a networking website, it has numerous perks, and it offers additional services to paid subscribers.

I’ve used LinkedIn for several purposes in the past, but I’ll describe a few of them.

Before applying for a job, I generally use the network to see if I am connected to anyone who currently works at the company. The website shows my degree of connection, based on if you know the person directly. This is a great tool to keep track of my personal network, especially since many users generally maintain their profiles over time. Otherwise, maybe I wouldn’t have known that my uncle from Delaware got hired at Disney and now lives in California.

LinkedIn also encourages strictly professional online profiles. While Facebook also provides a space to create a profile, the ability to upload photos, apps and games stand in the way of maintaining professionalism.

One of my favorite features is the recommendations section. Similar to a reference on a resume, this section allows users to ask their old bosses and coworkers to leave a note about  them on their profile page.

LinkedIn has some other cool features, but I’ll let you explore them once you have an account.

Now back to Signal.

Signal actually launched last year, but LinkedIn seemed to have missed the publicity bus; I had no idea it existed until I logged in today and watched a video on the landing page. Despite the lack of press, I took a look around and here’s what I found:

Signal searches tweets from the entire LinkedIn network, displaying targeted, relevant search results catered to whatever you’re searching for. This is a feature Twitter users have been longing for. Twitter did, however, introduce a new search function recently to gather and somewhat filter real time results, but it wasn’t exactly the solution users were looking for.

Another important note is that Signal searches tweets from all LinkedIn users, not just your network. Tweets can be filtered by connection, topic, time, location or industry, helping users find exactly what they’re looking for.

In summary, Signal makes great use of what LinkedIn already has: a comprehensive business network. The missing element was a reason for users to visit the site when they’re NOT looking for jobs or adding connections. Signal may have just attacked this problem head-on, giving users a current reason to check in frequently.

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What do you think of Signal?  Will you be logging into LinkedIn more often?

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