LinkedIn will launch two new functions for companies who have followers on LinkedIn, both of which will be of interest to marketers and advertisers: "Targeted Updates" and "Follower Statistics."

Targeted Updates will allow companies to segment their followers by a range of variables such as industry, seniority, job function, company size, non-company employees, and geography. Companies will be able to send different status updates to different groups of followers, LinkedIn vp/North American ad sales Jonathan Lister told us.

Follower Statistics will essentially be an analytics dashboard that will allow companies to see how effective their updates have been.