LinkedIn Corp. wants to go to the next phase of networking by introducing bots to help make connections easier for both individuals and enterprises. The company announced yesterday three big updates: a new desktop design, an Interest Feed for relevant news pertaining to a user’s industry and a smart messaging facility.

The company has also launched LinkedIn Learning, a platform in which industry experts will offer online courses in English, German, Spanish, Japanese and French. Don’t know what to study? LinkedIn will take care of that by offering users suitable courses related to their LinkedIn account. Enterprises can take insights from LinkedIn to cater for employees, offering suitable learning paths. Organizations can then receive analytics to measure the effectiveness of these courses.

“Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” Linkedin said of its new vison, “And launching LinkedIn Learning is a big milestone in our journey.”

In a press release, LinkedIn said, “Our courses are broken into bite-sized segments that can be viewed anytime, on any device, online and off. Learning content is recommended throughout your LinkedIn.com experience, helping you easily discover relevant courses, and the content can be integrated with a learning management system.”

At the same time LinkedIn is looking at making messaging more effective so that users can “unlock the power of their networks,” said Mark Hull, head of product for the LinkedIn messaging team. The smart messaging system will alert users if a company they are looking at employs any of their friends.

If it does, LinkedIn will connect the users via messaging and if needed help with an opening conversational point. A bot will scan both users’ Google calendars for a suitable meeting time and offer a location recommendation based on users’ previous activities. If that’s not enough, on the day of the meeting LinkedIn will send a push notification with information about the person they are about to meet so as to help them prepare for the meeting.

LinkedIn says that it has seen a 240 percent increase in messaging since its mobile app was introduced last year, with half its active members using the messaging platform each week.

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