What started as a business and professional platform where professionals seeking employment would post their resumes and research employers and industries has transformed into a social network a lot more similar to Facebook. Just over a year ago, LinkedIn redesigned its website. With the “Stories” introduction, the business website started looking more and more familiar with other social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Since it first launched in 2003, the professional network has gone through many updates that eventually shifted the entire content and kind of lost the professional vibe. Some of the users argue that all of these changes and updates attracted a completely different type of users.
Today the content that appears on your LinkedIn feed is a little different, “thanks” to the more personal social networks. It’s not uncommon to see a funny viral videos, posts on religion, celebrity gossip, or even personal dramas.
While all this stuff may be entertaining, its place is not on a professional network. This type of content is close to Facebook, where posts like these don’t look strange to other users. But are the changes necessarily a bad thing? Read on to find out.
Why LinkedIn changed?
When the business network launched 18 years ago, people rushed to join for a chance to get a job. They meant business, and their behaviour had to be spot on just as it would be in an interview.
The communication was professional and thus dry as if its users were afraid of being told off. In the meantime, other social media networks saw success in different, more fun and relaxed ways. Trying to keep up, LinkedIn added a few features to make the platform more fun and easier to navigate.
And we don’t blame them! Seeing Facebook’s numbers skyrocketing, the changes were a long time coming, and it was a smart move by LinkedIn.
But that is not the only reason why the content has been changing. People are on Facebook and Instagram all day long! So they are used to a social media behaviour typical for the two social networks. And when they join LinkedIn, they don’t change that behaviour as they don’t see anything wrong with it.
What are the changes?
While many of the updates brought higher revenue for LinkedIn, there were some that the users found unnecessary. Some of the useful changes include:
- Open to Work. This new addition showed significant response with laid-off employees during the Covid-19 crisis
- Connecting tabs. These were added in the messages so people can easily connect to video meetings on Zoom or Microsoft Teams
- Search button. LinkedIn pages now have a search tab added to easily find people, content or groups
However, while these updates may have created a better environment for the business community and networking, the following ones reduced the quality of that engagement.
- Group changes. LinkedIn Groups are places where like-minded people or people in the same business share knowledge, ideas and experience. But since LinkedIn changed the settings and the way the “Group” option works, the response rates have significantly declined. Maybe these changes in the “group” functionality stopped spamming, but the downside is that users lost interest and turned to other platforms, such as Facebook.
What if the changes affect your network and connections?
While your LinkedIn experience is closely connected to the people in your network, the people you choose to connect with, it is those people that post the type of content you may find irrelevant, annoying, repetitive or spam to try and sell you something.
Some users complain this content is overflowing their feed so much so that they are missing out on the relevant posts. But, instead of ditching the entire platform, consider removing those contacts in your network that no longer share your interests.
Also, LinkedIn allows you to choose what you want to do with each post that appears on your feed, just like Facebook. If you click on the three dots on the right upper corner of the post you don’t like, LinkedIn will give you three options:
- Hide this post
- Unfollow
- Report
Choose whichever one you like to ensure getting a great experience on the business network.
While LinkedIn may never be the same as Facebook, and we don’t want it to be, it is becoming more entertaining and easier to navigate for its 700 million users who will, regardless of its layout, keep coming to see what’s new in the business world and what more they can learn from the world’s largest professional network.