It simply much nicer to have photos on sites that involve interaction between people so I'm glad to see LinkedIn now has photos on profiles. They also announced a new version of the toolbar for MS Outlook. I found the previous version significantly slowed down Outlook (at least for me) but I'll give this new one a try.
Meanwhile, XING, another of the SNS services I like (although LinkedIn say they are not really an SNS service) has announced some new features, the most interesting being fields to link your profiles on other SNS sites. More details on Venture Beat. I guess that means they are getting into the field of identity aggregation. There's many sites out there in this field. Some links here.
At last week's New Context Conference (Japanese) in Tokyo, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn also talked about plans to release a Japanese version of LinkedIn next year (although it sounds like plans are still at an early stage). It was also interesting to hear that he is an investor in Facebook. With regards to new features, he said that LinkedIn has a policy of not announcing new features until they are ready to keep the competitive edge they have invested R&D effort into. A short article here from Mashable on the battle for dominance between LinkedIn and Facebook, but personally I have to wonder whether they are directly competing in the same space.
