The more observant amongst you will have noticed a slight change to LinkedIn company pages over the past couple of days. On Monday, the team at LinkedIn announced an upgraded version of the company profiles called Company Pages designed to help businesses better showcase products and services with additional features and functionality.

Page administrators can highlight particular products or services and tailor product lists to different types of audiences, letting companies feature product videos as well as targeted display advertising.

LinkedIn members visiting Company Pages can also post recommendations and reviews of products or services and those recommendations will appear in their own profiles as well. Businesses can also write and share their own endorsements.

The idea is to encourage employees, customers and others to spread word-of-mouth about a company throughout the LinkedIn network to boost sales and interaction. (Of course, word-of-mouth can work against as well as for a business.) With Facebook and Twitter becoming increasingly important marketing tools for companies, LinkedIn wants to maintain its edge as a business-focused network with 80 million professional users.

I’ve also had a look at the statistics page, which provides a wealth of useful information. Check out KPMG as a starter for 10…