LinkedIn has become the subject of ridicule for turning into a copycat Facebook, especially with the way users have been populating its feed with faux-inspirational stories, which resulted in memes like this:

Putting that aside, LinkedIn has recently rolled out a series of new features as part of the redesign roll out that it’s been unveiling throughout the year.

It began with the “Open to Work” feature, which is a profile photo frame that people can use to show that they’re looking for new opportunities from recruiters only or the wider LinkedIn community as well. LinkedIn has said that nearly 2.5 million members have used the feature, with early results showing that members who use it receive 40% more Inmails from recruiters and 20% more messages from the LinkedIn community.

I’ll admit that this is a good feature but the following ones, in my opinion, don’t add any value to the platform and actually set it up for comparisons and criticisms. It just feels like LinkedIn is trying to copy other platforms, which are also competing against each other in a weird cannabilistic / one-up competition.

This behaviour is getting really old and really ridiculous, really quickly.

That being said, let’s go through the platform’s updates:

Complete Platform Redesign

This is a good effort on LinkedIn’s part because it’s about time that they uplift the platform while keeping it still professional-looking. My personal gripe is that the platform is evolving into the ‘Facebook for professionals’ instead of what it originally was: a platform for professionals that was treated respectfully as a way to make proper business connections and network.

Video calls directly from LinkedIn

I have mixed feelings about this to be honest. On one hand, it seems like an efficient way to schedule meetings and interviews. On the other, it feels like it could be a way to pressure people who aren’t comfortable with video calls into participating in one or a video call could accidentally start when no one’s ready for it.

LinkedIn Stories

We’re already pressured to post stories on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, we don’t need one more platform pushing users to post ‘authentic’ content. I predict in a few months, we’ll see LinkedIn roll out its version of TikTok too, similar to Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts. That’s just what we’ll need: business people awkwardly dancing in an attempt to look ‘social media savvy’.