New York, Aug 20 (IANS): Business-oriented social networking service LinkedIn has launched a free app to help you find your co-workers and learn more about their background.

“With 'Lookup' app, you can search for any coworker based on his or her name, title, experience, education and skills,” Ankit Gupta, LinkedIn's senior product manager, said in a blog post.

The new app makes professionals more productive and successful by helping them easily find, learn about, and contact their coworkers.

“We discovered in April that about 30 percent of members who search for people on LinkedIn each month view their coworkers’ profiles,” Gupta wrote.

“We wanted to find out why, so later that month we surveyed 814 professionals in North America about how they use their companies’ intranets,” he added.

Only 38 percent of professionals said their companies’ intranets are effective at helping them learn about their coworkers.

Nearly 58 percent said they could do a better job if they could find coworkers with specific skills.

“That’s why we developed 'Lookup',” Gupta added.

This is how it works.

Download the app and sign in with your official email address.

Now you can search and view any co-worker at your organisation that has a LinkedIn account.

“Lookup provides people with the photos, names and titles of coworkers whose LinkedIn profiles include the skill or title 'corporate communications,'” Gupta further wrote.

“Lookup” users can message coworkers, even if they have not downloaded the app and messages sent to coworkers’ LinkedIn inboxes via the app do not count against the number of “InMails” members get each month.

One can download it now from the App Store.