Business network LinkedIn has taken some more inspiration from its social networking brethren and sexed up its groups feature, improving its design and adding more personalisation.

The move pushes its strategy that it has been pursuing for a while forward as it tries to be more like Facebook or Twitter. In essence to be more social.

I don’t know about you, but I think LinkedIn has something of an identity crisis – its both a serious, somewhat po-faced business networking site that also, paradoxically, wants to be down with the kids.

But that said, adding more functions to engage users is not a bad idea. Groups already lets users choose to create an open forum in which other they can share news and information. There are currently over 650,000 groups on the site (the largest – with 200,000 members – is for an e-marketing association).

What LinkedIn has done is remove the walls that previously separated original remarks made by users and off-site content such as news articles, with the aim conveying the sense of an actual discussion.

Also, users’ profile pictures will be attached to any comments made on a group, while people visiting a group are able to mode their cursor over the last three people to have posted a comment and view their part of the conversation.

The site, which recently reached the 70m mark, has also adopted Facebook’s ‘Like’ function, allowing people to ‘like’ discussions. Users are also able to ‘follow’ other users, like on Facebook, a function LinkedIn added a few months ago.

Ian McCarthy, LinkedIn’s product manager, told TechCrunch that the upgrades were implemented to make the site more engaging and conversational. Which, quite frankly, it needs, as in my view it’s something like an embarrassing dad at a disco – a past-it wannabe with no rhythm.