As the world continues to struggle with COVID-19, with the work market remaining stagnant, a business that has developed its famous companies primarily around recruiting is launching a redesign that drives involvement in other ways as it waits for the work economy to pick up.
A fresh overhaul of its desktop and mobile applications, LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned platform now with 706 million registered users, where professionals network and search for jobs, is taking the wraps off today, the first in four years.
Within that, there are several new things introduced by LinkedIn. First and foremost, LinkedIn is rolling out its version of Stories, the popular, ephemeral video and photo narratives that have become a significant engagement engine on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, starting in the U.S. and Canada and then expanding globally. The direct messaging service is also being updated with several new features, such as video chat. And its search feature has been reset to net in a wider set of parameters.
The message to the user base of LinkedIn is this: In other ways, we can be useful.
LinkedIn has, of course, been working on ways to make itself and its work tools particularly relevant to individuals in the last eight months, who have been truly outside the previous standards of everyone, with their own efforts to help connect individuals. But it’s also come under fire for not necessarily acting fast enough when its hat hasn’t been used very well as a recruitment network.
The effort did not start with COVID, but we have tried to diversify over the last few years by bringing our platform’s social network and conversation elements to the forefront, “said Kiran Prasad, product vice president of LinkedIn, in an interview.”
In recent years, stories have been one of the most noticeable developments in all social media, so it’s not too surprising to see LinkedIn jumping on the bandwagon as well. To be clear, this is not the effort of Stories that it worked on a few years ago to build its credibility and profile with college students, but something entirely different and aimed at all its users, just as Stories have evolved in the broader market to be used by everyone.
In a handful of countries, Brazil, the Netherlands, the UAE, Australia and France, LinkedIn has been testing this newer version for the last three months, and the company said that “millions” of stories were shared across hundreds of thousands of conversations at that time.
Messaging, meanwhile, has been one of LinkedIn’s most popular services , enabling more private conversations between links and potential contacts. The site does not disclose usage numbers, but says that in the past year, messages sent increased by 25 percent.
Messaging, meanwhile, has been one of LinkedIn’s most popular services , enabling more private conversations between links and potential contacts. The site does not disclose usage numbers, but says that in the past year, messages sent increased by 25 percent.
That will be something that LinkedIn, again with a turn to video, also hopes to boost. In this instance, it announces the integration of video chats with Zoom, BlueJeans, and Microsoft’s Teams.
Similar to how Facebook’s Workplace has done with its integrations, it’s good to see LinkedIn expanding outside of the Microsoft ecosystem to bring in instruments that are already popular elsewhere.
