LinkedIn Today was launched over 2 years ago as a newspaper to summarise the daily business news. Channels is the most notable addition to LinkedIn Today since its inception, due to the fact that it will help pump even more content into LinkedIn’s network.

What does this mean to you? If you use LinkedIn on a regular basis, then you will probably find yourself spending more time than usual now. This is LinkedIn’s goal anyway…

Adding more content to homepage update streams will surely make finding and sharing content easier. It will also provide tailored content to your interests. The umbrella categories are designed to help members find more of the news they want to read in areas such as retail, social media and technology. As of now, there are only 20 categories in total, but more are getting added soon. Each category combines popular posts from news sources with those from selected influencers in the given topic.

In terms of marketing activities, I wouldn’t imagine an awful lot of adjustment would be needed. Taking a few minutes to select the channels that suit your interests, perhaps following a few new key influencers and Voilà, your content updates have been tailored to your interests.

Spokesperson Julie Inouye explained: “We believe Channels better represents the content and topical conversations professionals are discussing and sharing on LinkedIn, which go beyond specific industries.”

It has also been clarified that Channels does not yet feed into mobile streams, but this is something that LinkedIn is working on developing.

How do you think the new channels feature will affect your LinkedIn activity?