LinkedIn Gets User Photos, Starting Friday

It's a small thing, sure, but LinkedIn is an essential piece of any business user's toolkit. And now LinkedIn users will be able to actually see the people they're connected to, because after four years of nothing but those soothing baby-blue borders and blue-and-black text, LinkedIn is finally going to allow you to add your picture to your profile.

Yes, it's 2007, but as VentureBeat notes, this speaks directly to the conservatism of LinkedIn and its desperate desire not to follow the path of MySpace, appealing to the lowest common denominator of the web. You'll have 6,400 pixels to work with (80 x 80) and you'll be limited to one photo only. The idea is not to turn LinkedIn into a graveyard of party shots but to let users enhance their virtual resume with a small head shot, much like you see on more and more resumes these days. Users will also be able to block photos from appearing to other users not in their network or not direct connections (or no one at all, which would kind of defeat the purpose of uploading a pic).

While I'm glad LinkedIn has finally taken this step (duplicate names are so common on networks like Facebook that it's much easier to pick out a true "friend" based on his photo rather than reading his background information), I will be curious to see how many users take it seriously. LinkedIn has always been the most upscale social network on the web, and since it's devoted to business exclusively, it should be, but I'll still be curious to see how many Britney and Paris headshots are littering the site come next Friday. 

The new feature launches tomorrow. I'll have my headshot there (here's my LinkedIn profile) as soon as it's up and running! 

LINK: A Photo is Worth a Thousand Words