The Pulse Reader app from Linkedin is one of the most popular e-reading apps out there. It allows you to quickly add in your favorite news websites and easily check out the top stories. The major selling point was being able to create dedicated pages where you can establish genres. So you could have a page devoted to tech news, another gaming news and quickly switch between all the different sites you follow. This ends today, Linkedin has pushed out an entirely new user experience for Android and the iPhone.
When you start the new app, you’ll be served topical news stories from a variety of established news sources, such as the New York Times. All of the content is curated by a number of editors that will insure there is always new content available.
Linkedin is hoping that you will log into the app using your social user credentials and it will then server you news items written by people in your network. Not many people in my network have time to write just on Linkedin, since most of them run big companies, but there are always the content SEO spammers.
The most immediately noticeable thing is the new cards-based interface, that hass been designed to enable users to skim through lots of content quickly. Don’t like a story? Dismiss it. Want to read a story later? Save it. Like the author of the article? Follow them. All these interactions will continuously refine your content recommendations.
If you have been a longtime Pulse user the standard way of doing things is gone forever. All of the different publications you follow are intermixed on the main page with the curated content served by Linkedin. You can no longer follow a ton of different publications, instead you have to visit their “page” individually. This makes it very taxing if you read a lot of different sites on a daily basis.
I think this new design was a way for Linkedin to force their own content down users throats, at the expensive of customization and ease of use. It seems the company does not want their existing users, they want new users. They want the type that want to read mainstream stories and who casually read a blog or two.
Linkedin has alienated all of their users with one app update. I suggest avoid updating the Pulse client for Android and the iPhone at all costs.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.