LinkedIn announced Wednesday that it's hopping on the social networking bandwagon of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, by letting users upload cover photos on their profile pages.
The feature will only be available to users who pay for the premium version of LinkedIn at first, though general users will be able to upload their own photos in a few months. LinkedIn will also offer "an exclusive gallery of beautiful background images," in case you're having trouble finding a picture that fits your professional style.
Along with the new background photos, LinkedIn is introducing a slew of new services for its premium subscribers. Premium users will now stand out in search results by having profile listings that are twice the size of those of unpaid subscribers. They'll also get personalized suggestions for how they should optimize their profile for searches. Premium users will now be able to leave their profiles "open" so that more members can see their full profiles and reach out to them for free. They'll be able to see a 90-day list of who has viewed their profiles and the top 100 results for how they "rank" against their connections.
Premium services cost $23.99 per month, but LinkedIn just released a new starter package called Premium Spotlight that only costs $7.99 per month.
Subscriptions represented 20% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2014 for LinkedIn, and the company likely wants to jack that percentage up by adding new features and introducing a cheaper version of the service.