LinkedIn is unto something. While company pages have been around for over 2 years, a few months ago LinkedIn started allowing us to "follow" companies and edit those we work for - wiki style. These enhancements, plus the addition of the news feed, made it clear that LinkedIn was starting to go beyond networking and recruiting.
Today, LinkedIn launched a new feature for its company pages (also known as "inPages") that enables companies to showcase products and services. These products can be recommended and reviewed through a new Like-ish "Recommend" button. Users can also share to their feed, Twitter, etc. If this becomes widely used, it will be quite valuable for companies seeking feedback and word of mouth, and more importantly, to users who are increasingly skeptical of advertising.
40 companies already have one of these enhanced LinkedIn pages and I'm glad to confirm that Samsung is one of them. You can see the enhanced Samsung Electronics global page we've updated with the new features, as well as the newly created Samsung Electronics America.
LinkedIn has unique challenges that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube don't have in terms of company profiles: Company pages on LinkedIn may have thousands of users that identify themselves with that company so any changes, mistakes, or incorrect information could be problematic. Of course, this is just the Social Media Manager in me talking because this is also a big advantage for LinkedIn. Why? Because LinkedIn users are real people displaying their real information and making real recommendations about real products. With 80 million users with carefully selected networks, it is likely that LinkedIn will provide more opportunities for companies and users to engage in ways that would not be possible elsewhere.
Below is a screenshot and a video from the LinkedIn Connect event in NYC.