3 Reasons Why Newsle (and LinkedIn) is now Important for your business

What started off as a platform for connecting professionals has evolved considerably; LinkedIn is no longer just a platform for making ‘connections’. It has evolved into a proper social network for professionals, and after Rapportive & Slideshare in 2012 and Pulse in 2013, LinkedIn is still on an acquisition spree to polish its usability. The recent acquisition of Newsle, what is called as the Google Alert (it literally is one) for your professional network, is much more than an addition of a feature.If you want to sift through the mentions: articles, blog posts, news pieces that contain the names of individuals in your Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, Newsle is your tool. The most important thing about Newsle is that it skips social media mentions, thus saving you from all the clutter. Moreover, it’s fast; it takes seconds to complete its own search and deliver the relevant content to you.

We look at 3 reasons why Newsle has now become important for businesses:

Know more about your network

How much do you know about your network? There are about 1k people in my network but the information of a lot of them just trails off my mind. Ryan Roslansky, Head of Content Products, LinkedIn, said in the blog post announcing the acquisition, “LinkedIn and Newsle share a common goal: We both want to provide professional insights that make you better at what you do. For example, knowing more about the people in your network – like when they’re mentioned in the news – can surface relevant insights that help you hit your next meeting with them out of the park.”

News and blog mentions on important digital media channels of your connections help you keep a tab on the new developments. For example, on my Newsle feed I could read news about many individuals who otherwise appeared ‘silent’ by looking at their LinkedIn profile.

Curated content

Disambiguation, natural language processing and machine learning algorithms: these are the areas that Newsle has been working on, and are the critical reasons behind the acquisition. It’s because of its smart core algorithm to filter irrelevant content that Newsle is able to deliver curated information to you so fast & with considerable accuracy.

It’s curated because a majority of your connections would belong to a certain set of professions. If you’re into marketing, you do have a lot of individuals in the same space, and it’s good to keep a tab of who’s doing what. While we’re talking of acquisitions, consider the VCs; wouldn’t they want to keep a tab on how various entrepreneurs in their network are doing? I am sure they must have other channels as well, but such Newsle might serve as the go-to place for VCs for the information they want on an individual in one place.

Influencer publishing

LinkedIn opened its doors for all its members to publish on its platform. Called Professional Publishing platform’, this platform has seen considerable adoption among professionals. It’s because of my connections that the number of notifications on my LinkedIn bar is always in 2-digits because of the posts published by someone.

Now how does Newsle fit in here? Over time, it will make the content published by such active LinkedIn users more discoverable. If you see the bigger picture, there’s Influencer for publishing, Newsle for the discoverability, and Pulse for the likes and comments; a considerably holistic social network. This should be a platform of critical importance for B2B businesses that leverage content marketing for promotional activities.

All in all, the wholesome network that LinkedIn has evolved into with the acquisition of Newsle is something that businesses should give importance to, and leverage at the right moment.