I’ve had the Linkedin app installed on my BlackBerry for some time now, as I make extensive use of the social network for business. It has to be said though, considering that Blackberry has always been considered as ‘the phone of choice’ for business use, the Linkedin app is truly awful, and is a pale imitation of its iPhone and Android counterparts. You have to ask why THE business phone does not have THE best app for THE business social network.
But not any longer, because I happened to discover, quite by accident that there is an upgrade available, not by way of an app, but in an highly optimised version of their website for mobile.
I do receive emails to my Blackberry when there are significant events on Linkedin, but following one of the embedded links commonly proved fatal, causing my BlackBerry to grind to a halt and fail as it tried desperately to cope with a rich website that was never designed for mobile use. Just the other week though, I mistakenly clicked on such a link and was surprised to discover the ‘all new’ mobile friendly Linkedin website – and very good it is too.
Upon further investigation, it does appear this site has been around for at least six months now, but it seems that only recently has mobile access been correctly redirected (at least form my Blackberry). There are still a few issues with the redirects though, as it seems some work and some don’t, still choosing to take you to the ‘mobile killing’ full website. Yes, the mobile version does have a reduced featureset, but this does not seem to be the reason for the lack of redirection.
So finally, BlackBerry can proudly claim to support Linkedin just as well as any other mobile, or does it? One of the drawbacks of a mobile friendly website when compared with an app, is the lack of push notifications. When someone sends you an email, or a Facebook message, or Tweets at you, your mobile lets you know about it without you having to check, because apps can do that, websites can’t. So whilst the Linkedin mobile site is eons better than the Blackberry app, you do have to forfeit the notifications. This is a small price to pay though for what is now a very usable piece of business networking software.
Despite that though, for me it is too little too late, and I’ll still be dumping my BlackBerry later this year. What about you? Do you use your mobile to access Linkedin and network from the comfort of wherever you so choose?