For some time, LinkedIn has offered a question and answer forum called LinkedIn Answers at http://www.linkedin.com/answers. Similar to Quora, LinkedIn users can pose questions or provide answers to other user's questions and demonstrate their expertise. It's a service that has received mixed feedback, certainly, but LinkedIn has decided to stop providing the service by January 31. Will you miss it?

LinkedIn continues to develop and improve the Company Page exerience, as well as integrate SlideShare into their platform. Businesses with a LinkedIn Company Page can now share images or files as a status update, not just text and links. The file sharing functionality in particular is interesting since a presentation or PDF that is uploaded will be automatically converted and displayed.

Earlier I uploaded a new eBook I created called Creating Great Content. It's a free eBook and being able to share that with my LinkedIn followers directly is an excellent marketing tool.

LinkedIn announced today that the professional social network has passed 200 million members. It's a tremendous milestone and the announcement went on to break down how that membership is comprised.

For instance, the site boasts 74 million members in the United Sates, and 11 million in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, India has actually surpassed the UK for second place at 18 million members.

LinkedIn is gaining approximately 2 new members every second, and a great many of those are coming from countries like Turkey, Brazil and even China.

From an industry perspective, Information Technology (IT) represents the largest segment at 4 million members, followed by Financial Services, Higher Education, Computer Software and Telecommunication.

Quietly amongst the new Google+ Communities and #PhotoWars this week, LinkedIn has added a new feature to its Company Pages called Group Spotlight. With it, you can feature a group that you own or are a member of right on your Company Page.

To spotlight a group, log into LinkedIn and go to your Company Page. Once there, click on the blue Edit button and go down to the Featured Groups section. You can then start typing in the name of the group you want to feature and select it when it comes up, just like when you're posting an update. Once you've selected all that you wish to feature, scroll back up and click the Publish button.

If you have a Klout account, you know that each day you are given a set number of K's which you can use to indicate topics other users are influential in. The giving and receiving of K's is an activity that generates a lot of user activity and keeps Klout users coming back daily. Now, LinkedIn is doing something along the same lines.

In a blog post, LinkedIn explained, "With just one click, you can now endorse your connections for a skill they’ve listed on their profile or recommend one they haven’t added yet."

Each time you endorse a skill for one of your connections they will receive a notification. It also generates activity for your profile that others can see.

It's too early to judge whether or not your connections will be impressed by your number of endorsements but initial opinions seemed to suggest that would not be the case.

Over the past few months LinkedIn has implemented quite a few changes, from dramatic shifts in the overall look and layout of the site, to minor changes like the ability to follow company pages from your mobile phone. Since LinkedIn is the social network for professionals, one would assume that all of these changes are great for business and professionals. But are they? We will review each of the nine significant changes that have been implemented and see what conclusions we can reach.