LinkedIn allows photos after earlier resistance

LinkedIn allows photos
after earlier resistance

NEW YORK — Giving into user demand, the networking site LinkedIn will soon start letting its users post photos with their personal profiles.

LinkedIn Corp. has long resisted photos, seeing itself as a site for professional networking and job-seeking and desiring to set itself apart from social-oriented hangouts such as News Corp.’s MySpace and Facebook. In addition, LinkedIn didn’t want to open potential employers to discrimination complaints.

But Adam Nash, LinkedIn’s senior director of products, said photos remain one of the most-requested features, and the site started allowing them Friday — with limits.

Users will be able to post only one photograph, and a head shot is highly recommended. Nash said the feature isn’t meant for posting photos from afterwork gatherings but for helping users recognize former colleagues and classmates. Although party shots are discouraged, there are no current plans to ban them.

LinkedIn also will allow a user to turn off photos completely when viewing other profiles — useful for human resources employees searching the site for potential recruits but fearful that a photo might compromise anti-discrimination policies.

Users also can control who can see their photos — their closest connections, everyone or in between — and they won’t be pressured to post one. Photo-less profiles won’t have an empty box seen at many other sites to remind visitors that a photo is missing.

Microsoft changes
video ad tactic

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. is testing a way to present video advertising that’s less annoying to Web surfers.

Instead of forcing MSN Video visitors to watch an ad before every clip, Microsoft now shows one ad before their first video selection. The next ad appears after at least three minutes of viewing — and it won’t interrupt a video midstream.

The change is part of an MSN Video site redesign that went live in the U.S. Wednesday. Microsoft said the new tactic lets people channel surf without being interrupted by a commercial every time.

Web media companies and advertising agencies are still looking for effective but unintrusive ways to present advertising with video. In August, Google Inc.’s popular video-sharing site, YouTube, added semitransparent “overlay” ads at the bottom of some video clips.

The Associated Press uses Microsoft’s MSN video player to distribute video to its newspaper and broadcast members’ Web sites, but MSN’s change does not affect the service.

Associated Press