LinkedIn has introduced a new "Follow Company" feature as a way to (you guessed it) follow companies on LinkedIn. Now LinkedIn users can simply follow organizations to see their latest happenings, and this has a tremendous amount of potential for networking and job opportunities of interest.

With LinkedIn being the professional network that it is, this may have more important value for concrete, real-world relationship and career building than say following someone on Twitter or friending them on Facebook (though there can certainly be similar value there as well in some cases).

"’Follow Company’ helps you be among the first to learn about developments at companies like DreamWorks, find job openings at NASA or stumble upon business development opportunities at Netflix," explains LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky. "The new feature lets you tap into key goings-on at nearly a million companies that already have their company profiles on LinkedIn and more that are being created every day."

"Most importantly, this feature can deliver insights – you may be surprised at – such as the pace of hiring at your nearest competitor or the start of a whole new industry as you see web technology companies hiring geography teachers (for e.g.). Or better yet, you may find the job of a lifetime to do cause marketing for Major League Baseball," he adds.

There are a couple ways to follow a company on LinkedIn. You can go to any member’s LinkedIn profile, and if a member is/was affiliated with a company, you can mouse-over it and click "Follow Company", or you can follow the company from its own profile page.

The Follow Company feature makes so much sense for LinkedIn, now that it’s here, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been around for longer. This is essentially the basic blueprint for how social networking works now.