Hyderabad: Targeting an SME in one of the remotest villages of India might be on every tech giant’s radar. But, how many actually step in to get these SMEs online still remains a question.
Striving to get all professionals (and businesses) online, LinkedIn is evaluating newer platforms and devices to help bridge the gap between professionals of different economic strata, Nishant Rao, country manager, LinkedIn India, told this correspondent.
For this, LinkedIn has recently tied-up with Nokia Asha series. “Nokia Asha provides a great vehicle to help bridge affordability and a rich touch-based smartphone experience. So, we are excited to take the LinkedIn app to Nokia Asha Full Touch and 501 series,” said Rao.
The Nokia Asha-LinkedIn partnership also means that the professional network has its eyes on the mobile platform.
“Mobile is an integral part of LinkedIn’s strategy. What’s most important is that the mobile experience needs to differ from the traditional internet experience. So, we have been redesigning and simplifying our user experience,” he added.
The company recently acquired Pulse, the popular newsreader for the web and mobile for $90 million. “Our Pulse acquisition helped give us further know-how and assets on this front so you can expect to see us continue to invest in it going forward,” he said.
Pulse has hundreds of content partnerships with publishers that enables it to serve up a majority or all of a publisher’s content directly within their app. LinkedIn links to all of their (non-Influencer) content off-site and ideally will keep their users directly on-site.
“So, if Pulse can keep its existing publisher relationships intact, LinkedIn can serve more content on site, and therefore, keep their users with them,” said an analyst. LinkedIn’s mobile traffic rose to 33 per cent against 21 per cent Âa year ago.
