Hot on the heels of InApps, LinkedIn has announced a new search platform featuring a whack of new features including customization and saved searches. The social network’s senior product manager Esteban Kozak blogged the new launch, including a video demonstrating the new functionality.

Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reviews the new tools: “Most of the new features revolve around people-search (not surprising given the network’s theme), and while there isn’t anything particularly exciting from the user’s perspective the changes make the engine significantly more convenient (and will hopefully help the recently unemployed get back on their feet that much faster).”

Dave McClure, Silcon Valley entrepreneteur and investor in or advisor to a few services offering similar takes on search, thinks LinkedIn mis-pitched the new features: “The new feature they probably should have highlighted more clearly is People Search Alerts via Email. You can now save up to 3 searches for common keywords, job titles, company names, or other topic-specific searches, and get them emailed to your inbox on a weekly or monthly basis.”

“i (sic) haven’t done a thorough review of these types of search & notification services, but there are many of them.  That said, their value is directly correlated to the quality of their search (crappy search with notification isn’t that useful… however great, targeted search with notification is quite useful).”

YouTube launches widescreen video format
Accommodating a user base and an audience that grow more demanding by the day, YouTube has announced an enhancement to its platform – a widescreen video format which they hope will provide users with “a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience.”

It may seem like a fairly innocent product tweak, but ReadWriteWeb’s Rick Turoczy sees a pattern emerging: “…while the widescreen feature – although a dramatic change to the YouTube player we’re used to seeing – doesn’t really give rise to speculation, the combined series of recent upgrades to YouTube certainly do. First there was the high-definition video, then the live streaming, and now the widescreen. You have to wonder what Google has up their sleeve for this property. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s obvious.
“Clearly, Google can’t be putting all of this effort into YouTube simply for bringing MGM movies to the Web. Can it? Isn’t there likely something more happening? I would think so. But what does YouTube have in store? More movies? Television? Live sports? Hard to say. But it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to conjure up images of another room in which YouTube’s widescreen HD content could be living. Keyword there being ‘living’.”

Another reason businesses should embrace social media
Via Steve Rubel comes an answer to the question most businesses seem stymied by when it comes to engaging with social media communities – what if people say bad things about you?

Dave Fleet’s response is on the money: “They already are; you just can’t hear them. … social media is unlikely to create new issues for your brand (setting screw-ups and over-reactions aside); however it can speed-up existing issues. If there’s a problem with your brand, people are already saying bad things about you. If you’re not online, they’re just not saying them to you… because you aren’t listening. Is the ‘head in the sand’ approach really better?”