LinkedIn to increase “shelf life” of skills through continuous education 
LinkedIn is now offering its users 9,000 new courses in fields including programming, writing and accounting to improve their skillsets. Having come after the social network’s recent $1.5bn purchase of Lynda.com, the content of each course is largely based on Lynda’s resources. The service allows premium subscribers the opportunity to undertake 25 new courses per week, with an enterprise tier coming soon to allow large companies to make subscriptions for multiple employees.
LinkedIn Learning arrives to build out your 'skills' section Add to your education, not just your professional network.

With the ink still drying on Microsoft's purchase of LinkedIn, the social network everyone loves to hate is now looking to break into the online education with today's launch of LinkedIn Learning. After all, what could be better for your career than adding a couple new skills and areas of expertise to your online resumé?

As TechCrunch reports, LinkedIn Learning offers 9,000 courses built on top of content from online learning portal Lynda.com, which LinkedIn actually bought for $1.5 billion in early 2015. The courses currently cover everything from coding and programming to writing and accounting.

While employees or individuals can select and sign up for classes on their own, employers and HR managers can also recommend courses and then track their employees' progress through LinkedIn's analytics. For now, LinkedIn Premium subscribers can get 25 new courses every week, but there's also a forthcoming enterprise tier that will allow larger corporations to recommend courses for their entire workforce.

In other LinkedIn news today, social network also announced it will be releasing an updated design for the desktop version that includes a revamped newsfeed and new messaging features with support for the increasingly ubiquitous chatbots. There's no release date for these features yet, just a promise that they're coming soon.