Professional networking site LinkedIn has made several dramatic improvements. This may just mark a new day for LinkedIn.

Changes to its polling tool now enable business professionals to receive a more in depth view of poll respondents and get more social simultaneously. The polls can now be embedded and distributed through users’ websites (copy and paste functionality after polls are created) and on social destinations such as Facebook and Twitter. This more “open” approach is sure to benefit LinkedIn’s awareness.

The improved poll application also provides application users with a deeper set of business intelligence data. Users can analyze answers, categorize the responses by age, gender, and even title, such as CEO. These analytics can be then used to gain insights from poll answers in specific demographics.

Another interesting item related to LinkedIn (and arguably most noteworthy) announced today is that its Groups feature is opening up to the public. Administrators are now able to make discussions searchable on the Web and on the site itself – enabling members to view a group’s discussion even if they are not a member of that particular group.