Reviewing LinkedIn's Contacts App
As social media has become a tool more and more businesses and organizations are using, LinkedIn has made a name for itself as an invaluable resource for professionals. Although it’s lumped in with other social media sites, LinkedIn has much more of a professional bent.
Now the site has developed a new app, LinkedIn Contacts, released to go along with the re-launched Contacts section of its website. Available on iPhone for free, Contacts helps you keep business contacts organized, lets you filter them in a variety of ways – by location, company, or by personalized tags – and allows you to sync your email and calendar to get updates about your connections. Syncing your calendar means the app will feed you information about people you'll meet with in upcoming meetings and remind you of recent communication you've had with them, although you can only see that information for the current day.When you activate the app, you can choose to add sources that it pulls information from. Should you choose, LinkedIn Contacts will sync contacts from your Google accounts, Yahoo! mail, Outlook mail, your iPhone, and from some apps like Evernote (you can choose not to let it access all this information if you prefer, in which case it only displays information from your LinkedIn contacts). Once it taps into those contacts, LinkedIn will show you your history with each connection, including how you met and conversations you’ve had. LinkedIn does this itself, without the need for you to go in and manually enter past events. The company has said it doesn’t plan to include Facebook and Twitter as sources to import contacts from.A “to do” tab displays updates among your contacts that you may want to comment on or share, like mentions in the media, work anniversaries, and job changes.All in all, it’s a well designed app. If you use LinkedIn on a regular basis and enjoy it, chances are good you’ll like using the Contacts app. It’s got a clean design that’s easy to read on a mobile screen, and it acts as a modern-day Rolodex, making it easy to keep up with contacts and events.