LinkedIn Quick Tip: How Hotmail Users Can Grow Their Network

Last year, Microsoft rolled out a new feature to Hotmail called Active Views, which lets users work within the body of an e-mail without being directed to a new page. Active Views, for example, lets you view Flickr slideshows within the e-mail message and browse and add new Netflix titles to your queue without having to visit the Netflix site.

Now LinkedIn has collaborated with Microsoft, rolling out connection invite e-mails using Active Views, which allows LinkedIn’s Hotmail users take full advantage of the feature.

LinkedIn’s Moses Ting, a user experience designer, says that LinkedIn’s motivation in partnering with Microsoft arose from the realization that traditional e-mail fails in helping manage the onslaught of having to do more across more mediums in order to stay connected with your friends and colleagues.

“Traditionally, e-mail has more or less served as a delivery vehicle for static content. Static content succeeds when it’s used properly to present information or to drive a limited set of actions,” he says. “However, today’s world demands much more from the working professional.”

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

Now, when you invite someone to connect on LinkedIn and the other person accepts, you receive an e-mail about the successful connection. Within that e-mail, LinkedIn highlights insights about the other person’s network by showing who they’re connected with and which companies they follow.

With Active Views, you can now work directly within the e-mail to send requests to connect with people you might know and follow companies you’re interested in.

Kristin Burnham covers Consumer Technology, SaaS, 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