LinkedIn Quick Tip: iPhone App Introduces New Gesture Features

Back in March, LinkedIn rolled out “LinkedIn Today,” a beta social news service that aggregates the top headlines and stories related to your industry, based on what your connections share.

When LinkedIn subsequently adapted LinkedIn Today for the iPhone, developers “focused on keeping the interaction model simple by leveraging familiar design patterns outlined in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPhone, says Frank Yoo, LinkedIn’s mobile design lead.

Now, in its first update since the launch of LinkedIn Today, users can navigate the iPhone app via new gestures that LinkedIn says are “more fluid and natural.” If you don’t want to learn the new navigation gestures, you can still use the standard navigation controls to browse the news on the app.Here’s what you need to know about the iPhone app updates and step-by-step instructions on how to employ the new gestures.

How to Navigate Between Articles as You Read

Start by selecting “News” from the LinkedIn home screen on your iPhone, then tap the first article you want to read. To advance to the next article without having to backtrack to the first screen, do the following:

1. Scroll to the bottom of the screen.

2. Once you’re at the bottom, pull up the screen until you see a headline preview of the next article below.

3. Lift your finger from the screen, and the article that you previewed will load.

[Want more LinkedIn tips, tricks and analysis? Check out CIO.com’s LinkedIn Bible.]

This gesture works in reverse, too. If you want to preview the article that appears before the one you’re looking at, scroll to the top of the page and pull down until you see the article that preceeds it.

How to Preview Multiple Article Headlines Before Selecting One

This new gesture is related to the one above, however it lets you preview multiple articles before selecting one. To do this:

1. Scroll to the bottom of the screen if you want to advance forward to an article.

2. At the bottom of the screen, pull up until you see a headline preview (like you did above), but this time, keep your finger on the screen.

3. To preview a headline beyond the next one, keep your finger on the screen then slide it down until the arrow flips. Without letting go, bring your finger back up. Do this until you find an article you want to read.

4. Once you see the headline you want, lift your finger, and the app will load it.

Just like with the first gesture, this one works in reverse, too. Follow the same instructions, except pull down from the top of the screen to choose an article that came before the one you’re currently looking at.

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Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and Web 2.0 for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com