Have you noticed LinkedIn’s new in-your-face version of its messaging platform? Skype and LinkedIn are both owned by Microsoft, so it’s no surprise that on-board messaging is increasingly Skype-like.

Sometimes it’s hard to carve out time in your day to swing by LinkedIn, but make it part of your routine, especially now that the LinkedIn messaging functionality is much more front and centre. You’ll notice that the messaging window stays resident on the screen as you move around LinkedIn, complete with presence icons giving you some sense of whether the contact is now on LinkedIn or has recently been.

I especially like how the LinkedIn messaging box changes with contextual information about how I’m connected to people who know the person or company whose page I just landed on. I’ll show you what I mean in this brief how-to video below. What do you think of LinkedIn’s new messaging capabilities?

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Photo by Ben Chun on Flickr