LinkedIn Pulse 4.0.12
Bought it to mess it up
After buying Pulse for a reported $90 million (€66 million) in cash, LinkedIn decided to give Pulse a new name and a slapped a fresh interface atop of its RSS functionality. The app looks good, but not great. And half the content displays badly or not at all, just like before.
In fact, not even the iPad version takes advantage of the big display. The app starts out fairly decent with an intuitive log-in experience but everything stops there. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it could be minutes before you figure out where to add the sources and link your other accounts to get feeds. The design, however, is admittedly well done with a clear resemblance to Apple’s iOS 7.
Not much better as far as usage goes
Using Pulse is a drag. We’ve never been avid fans of the service, and things aren’t any different now that LinkedIn bought it and messed with its UI and functionality.
One thing that really needs to be fixed in this app is the blank screen that greets you right after you sign in with your LinkedIn account. You’d think they’d have something ready for you, like a bunch of suggestions based on your education and profession. Even after linking Twitter and Facebook, the app still requires you to go hunt down your sources without any help.
Worst still, once you’ve managed to add a few news sources to your feed, half the content doesn’t even render. Images don’t display properly, and let’s not even go into videos. The dark viewing mode and other reading options are admittedly a nice touch, while sharing is also pretty easy from inside an article.
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0/5
Hits & Misses
hits
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misses
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Bottom Line
Design / UI5
It’s a shame LinkedIn messed up what is essentially a good design with a lot of thought put into browsing sources, categories, and ultimately read stories in a nice and relaxed manner. |
Function5
Very hard to get started as a newcomer, no basic list view to just tick articles as you go, poor rendition of the fetched web content, and we could probably find more things wrong with it. |
Security7
Pulse is not very private and will root itself into your social presence on Twitter, Facebook and other networks to fetch news tailored to your taste. From Facebook alone Pulse draws your public profile, friend list, email address and News Feed. |
Battery8
Very little battery drainage, app runs well on iOS 7.0 and newer firmwares. |
Price10
Free with no in-app purchases and no ads. |
Compatibility8
LinkedIn Pulse only runs on iOS 7. There are still plenty of users stuck with iOS 6 on their iDevices, but at least LinkedIn is committed to supporting the newest firmware. |
And that’s ‘cause we’re being generous
Specifications
- price:
- 100% Free
- current version:
- 4.0.12
- reviewed version:
- 4.0.8
- developer:
- LinkedIn Corporation
- category:
- INTERNET & NETWORK
- os version req.:
- 7.0
- age rating:
- 4+
- in-app purchases:
- No
- hits:
- 247