In the hope of making its newsfeed a little bit more interesting, Linkedin has added a list of 150 super influencers on the network – this is similar to Twitter or Facebook subscribe features. This elite circle includes US President Barack Obama, presidential candidate Mitt Romney, physician and writer Deepak Chopra, Virgin founder and CEO Richard Branson, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and Mashable’s founder and CEO Pete Cashmore.

Fans can follow these selected few for regular updates, just like on Twitter. However, there are some differences – there’s no 140-character limit on updates and the communication is designed to be business-related.

Linkedin has a very valid reason for not rolling this out to everyone – it wants to avoid the platform looking entirely like Twitter with a slew of fake accounts and off-subject tweets. Unleashing the same on Linkedin could destroy its niche as a sober business forum.

The group’s ability to engage Linkedin’s audience will be ranked by views, likes, comments and shares that are visible to all users. Such metrics will both act as a self-regulating feature, but will also prompt the inevitable ranking of the top 10 and bottom 10.

Twitter’s decision in June to no longer let users tweet to LinkedIn may have actually helped the company overcome criticism that it’s a low-engagement network – PageLever, an analytics tool for Facebook Pages, found that the Twitter disentanglement actually prompted a 1,000 per cent increase in page referrals from Facebook.

Since the Twitter breakup, LinkedIn also recently launched a redesign that made it look more like Facebook or Google+.

Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.

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