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LinkedIn is giving users a way to create polls for groups. If you're a group manager or member of a group, you can now create a poll with up to five questions. This is not only a fast way to collect useful information related to group-specific question, but it's also useful way to start discussion within a group that already has a strong number of members. Users can also share the polls they've published out to Twitter.

"LinkedIn groups are great for organizing users around similar topics but there is a often a big time lag in conversation compared to engagement on other social networks," Syracuse University Social Media Professor Dr. William J. Ward (@DR4WARD) tells us. Will this new feature help LinkedIn turn groups into spaces for engaged conversation?

LinkedIn's Shravya Garlapati has shared a number of tips for improving performance on their mobile site while using Node.js.

LinkedIn is working with a standard HTML5 mobile site as well as apps for iOS and Android. Previously, LinkedIn has talked about its continuous integration testing for mobile, now they're sharing some of what they've learned.

In a survey released today, recruiting software platform Jobvite noted that more than 22 million Americans used social networks to find jobs in 2011. One in six people, more than 15%, say they found a job through social networking. Fifty-four percent of job seekers are using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter for their search. Even though there's a higher job seeking volume on Facebook, more than one-third don't use it to look for work. There's far more actual job hunting on Twitter and Linked; almost all job seekers use LinkedIn for job hunting versus nearly 75 percent on Twitter. Overall, 86 percent (nine out of 10) job seekers have a profile on social media. Eighty-four percent of job seekers have a Facebook profile, 39 percent are onTwitter and 35 percent use LinkedIn.

Today LinkedIn launched a revamped version of CardMunch, an iPhone app that digitizes paper business cards with a single scan. The update gives users greater insight into the person behind the card via their LinkedIn profile, images of them and their contacts, where they've worked and where they went to school, along with the contact info on the business card itself. The previous version of this app only showed the information already found on the business card.

As of October 2011, 850,000 U.S. veterans were unemployed. The jobless rate for post-9/11 vets hit 12.1 percent. With an estimated one million service members scheduled to leave the military between 2011 and 2016, it was high time for President Obama to find new ways to help vets find civilian jobs. In addition to launching a government resource on WhiteHouse.gov, Obama teamed up with LinkedIn and Google to offer additional resources for veterans.

LinkedIn now tags job postings that might be best for veterans, and Google offers additional tools for the building the military veteran community online.

LinkedIn is giving users more information about groups they may wish to join. If you're wondering which groups to join, or wondering about the makeup of groups you belong to (or manage), LinkedIn has put together stats dashboards for LI groups that will give a ton of info about groups at a glance.

The statistics tool is open to anyone, so you can see the stats for any group you're thinking about joining. The stats are organized under three categories: Demographics, growth and activity.

Daily deals website Groupon has priced its IPO at $20 a share, a few dollars above the anticipated range of $16 to $18, in a heavily oversubscribed offering. Groupon added five million additional shares to its offering, bringing the total to 35 million shares sold. That still only accounts for 5.5 percent of the company. Groupon will be valued at almost $13 billion before it debuts on the Nasdaq Stock Market this Friday (GRPN).

The Wall Street Journal reports that Groupon will be the highest-profile Web IPO since late summer.

Today LinkedIn shared its Q3 financials in its second-ever earnings statement as a public company. Its user base has increased by over 60% this year, and unique visitors grew substantially as well. Revenue has more than doubled. For the first time, hiring solutions comprised more than half of LinkedIn's quarterly revenue. That became the company's biggest source of revenue in Q1 2010.

LinkedIn appears to have found a unique position as a place for jobs and and employees to find each other and is clearly pushing to cement that role. It's building new products, like Apply Through LinkedIn job applications, and recently launched Classmates, a new, data-driven tool targeted at students and recent graduates, which its biggest growing demographic.

As we wrote about earlier this week, Klout has reworked its algorithms, and your scores have changed. Some have gone up, some down. Despite claiming more transparency with their algorithms, they are still mostly opaque and mysterious. As one of our readers commented, "Klout just pulled a Netflix, taking trust off the table."

So while they tinker with their code, you might want to explore other alternatives that can help you measure your social media effectiveness. We have come up with 17 different services, some free, some fairly expensive. I have tried most of them and will give you my impressions so you can have a head start with your own explorations.

Analytics firm comScore released new data today showing that U.S. mobile social media audiences increased 37%, and more than half of social mobile audiences read a post from an organization, brand or event on their mobile device.

While the mobile browser accounted for more visits, research shows that the social networking app audience has grown five times faster in the past year. While the mobile browsing social networking audience has grown 24% to 42.3 million users, the mobile social networking app audience shot up 126% to 42.3 million users in the past year.