LinkedIn Introduces Sponsored Updates for Companies

LinkedIn is taking another page from the playbooks of Facebook and Twitter with its latest ad product.

LinkedIn introduced Sponsored Updates on Tuesday, which will let the more than 3 million companies on the social network pay to promote updates to a broader audience, rather than just to those users who already follow them.

"With Sponsored Updates, marketers will be able to distribute this content directly to relevant professionals in a place their customers and prospects are already consuming professionally relevant content," David Hahn, LinkedIn's vice president of product management, said in a statement. "Marketers can target Sponsored Updates to any segment of our premium audience based on professional profile data across more than 225 million members."