LinkedIn isn’t a company that widely publicizes the incremental changes to their service (unlike another social network I know), but they’ve slowly been rolling out improvements to their group service for a while, and now they’ve included a pretty major upgrade to their search.  The update enables LinkedIn search to search through the millions of conversations in Groups to find information relevant to your search.

This reminds me a bit of Quora — since LinkedIn is a professional network, the conversations within groups tend to be more informed and about professional services and ideas.  Users will be able to search an entire database of experts’ opinions on a certain subject and then join the groups.  That’s a fast way to access relevant information and people.

I’ve been waiting for an idea like this to leverage the collective intelligence of LinkedIn, and I think keeping these features launches off the front page means that it doesn’t disrupt the austerity of the site.  A lot of people don’t want LinkedIn to turn into a Facebook type app-stravaganza, and like that it can function as a great place to keep an online resume to show to your colleagues.

Read more about the feature here.

Image: Aleksandar Videnovic via Shutterstock