By bbr

by Sarah Warlick, content director

Newsle has been evolving following its acquisition by LinkedIn in 2014, and the new parent company has just announced another drastic change. Henceforth, Newsle has a new name and a specific function: it is now LinkedIn Connections In The News.

Other than a much more cumbersome name, the new status comes with several changes that Newsle users will notice, beginning this week. According to LinkedIn, these differences include:

• Regular Connections In The News emails will replace the alerts from Newsle. The mentions of connections appearing in news articles will continue to appear in the LinkedIn newsfeed as well.
• Only information and updates about LinkedIn connections will appear in Connections In The News emails users receive. For information about friends and colleagues who aren’t LinkedIn connections, you’re on your own. The integrations with other social media platforms will be defunct.

That’s not the only inconvenience stemming from Newsle’s full incorporation as a part of LinkedIn. Beginning in April, lots of Newsle features that users depended on are going away. Popular features like widgets, profiles, custom lists and Newsle.com’s web feed are disappearing on April 12th.

It’s not all bad news, though. LinkedIn is adding the ability to follow businesses that appear in news publications along with individuals. The company also promises to help users with exporting data from Newsle so they don’t lose it forever. Contact LinkedIn if you need their assistance doing this.

At a glance, this seems like the death knell for what was once a lovely standalone app. While there are lots of other options available – Flipboard, Feedly, Techmeme and others – it’s not easy to find one as user-friendly as Newsle, or with the same advanced filtering abilities.

LinkedIn offers pleasant wishes for dealing with the change in its announcement: We hope you enjoy this new way of keeping up with your professional connections whenever they’re in the news.

They ought to hope so, because there is no option to keep using Newsle as it was. The monster has eaten it in its entirety and spat it back out as an unappetizing mess! But maybe we’re overreacting.

What do you think? Is LinkedIn Connections In The News going to be so wonderful you never even miss Newsle or will you take the loss hard? We’re dubious, but trying to keep an open mind. Perhaps it will be okay after all.