Lookup falls in line with other recent LinkedIn initiatives, including its decision to unbundle and expand its footprint into a series of mobile apps for specific use cases and to motivate its users to use the platform as an enterprise tool. “Right now, we’re simply focused on making it easy for people to find, learn about and contact their coworkers, because their companies’ employee directories aren’t cutting it.” “We want to help make LinkedIn even more useful internally for employees and the companies they work for,” Gupta says. Results are not limited to first- or second-degree connections, so professionals can view coworker profiles even if they’re not connected on LinkedIn.

The Lookup team’s product manager Ankit Gupta describes it as a “startup within LinkedIn,” and he says it developed a new algorithm that lets you search for coworkers by name, title, skills, education, and current or past employers.

Lookup is latest enterprise inroad for LinkedIn That means details are visible only to coworkers who use Lookup and do not appear on public LinkedIn profiles. Contact preferences and profile information users add to their Lookup profile are stored on separate servers from where standard LinkedIn profiles are stored, according to a company spokesperson. Similar to how LinkedIn users build their profiles, Lookup users can also tailor profiles on the new service and set preferred communication methods. Lookup requires that users have LinkedIn profiles and that their current employers have properly maintained company pages on the site. The company’s goal with Lookup is to make it easier for professionals to find and connect with their coworkers.

(LinkedIn says an Android version is coming soon.) The company first mentioned its plans to release Lookup in January, and during the past few months it assembled a team of 14 employees to work on the app for Apple’s iOS devices and desktop computers. LinkedIn’s alternative to your outdated company directories has arrived in the form of a new service, called Lookup.

Linkedin lookup