Published on the 19/09/2013 | Written by Newsdesk

LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, has opened up to members as young as 13 for New Zealand and 14 for Australia. The change comes with the launch of its University Pages, designed to allow prospective students to learn more about and connect with the people who went to those universities.

Christina Allen, director of product management at LinkedIn, said in her blog announcing the new pages that the idea was born from knowing there are powerful insights about universities and their alumni career outcomes embedded in the millions of member profiles. “If harnessed, these insights could provide incredible value for students – helping them explore possible futures and build a support network to help them succeed on campus and beyond,” she said.

Although the new announcements bring the minimum member age in line with Facebook in most countries, LinkedIn has updated its privacy policy to care for LinkedIn’s younger members, implementing, amongst other things, different default settings for members who are minors to limit publicly viewable profile information and unwanted communications.

Meanwhile, Facebook last week quietly added a ‘professional skills’ tab to its user profiles – traditionally LinkedIn’s networking territory. Although initially reticent to comment, Facebook has since confirmed that the changes are in testing mode so they are not available to everyone yet and are subject to change.

Those who do have the option and chose to add a new skill will currently be taken to a new page that shows friends with similar skills, plus related pages, groups and a list of other people the user might know who say they have the same skill. By making the skills automatically public, Facebook is also making profiles more easily discoverable by others such as prospective employers, increasingly blurring the lines between public and private life.