LinkedIn Plans to launch ‘LinkedIn Stories’

According to a report from Forbes, LinkedIn is planning to use stories just like Snapchat – ‘LinkedIn Stories’ & is internally testing the functionality. This move will especially help engross the attention of younger professionals. The scope of LinkedIn in recent years has extended beyond just being a platform for social networking & for flaunting your online resume. Over the past decade, LinkedIn has added additional features to help professionals with much more than just finding a job. There are several paid & free of cost professional pieces of training on LinkedIn to help marketers update their skill-sets. LinkedIn Groups are analogous to real-world professional associations and have a long-term blogging platform. LinkedIn is an excellent platform to showcase your vision & share the thought leadership with your followers & connections. LinkedIn also serves as an impeccable platform for knowledge sharing & allows users to learn from the expertise of others around them. LinkedIn helps fuel the personal branding endeavors & as a result over the past few years, its algorithms have been more video-friendly than ever. Also, it is quite obvious that video-based content is getting preferential treatment & increased visibility in the LinkedIn feeds. Recently LinkedIn has made it easy for users to incorporate videos from sites like YouTube & Vimeo in the ‘About’ & ‘Experience’ sections of their profiles. LinkedIn Learning, formerly known as Lynda is a premium feature that enables video-based training modules to train members on building skills for professional growth. Early in 2019, LinkedIn Live was launched. This functionality allowed members to live stream video content to their connections. The trend analysis of LinkedIn incorporating more features evidence that when other social media platforms launch video-based features (for example Facebook Live) LinkedIn was quick to follow the suit. This seems to be reoccurring with a new conversational format for video. ‘LinkedIn Stories’ – LinkedIn’s contemporary to Snapchat & Instagram stories are on the verge of getting unveiled.

Pete Davies, LinkedIn’s Head of Content Products stated that stories are a lighter & more casual way of interacting in a business-centric world that constitutes LinkedIn.

‘LinkedIn Stories’ can help in optimizing business interactions by improving the current scenario-focused majorly on formal messaging & posting that constitute most of the interactions on the site. Davies also projects those LinkedIn users might use ‘LinkedIn Stories’ to share vital moments from their routine work set-ups & even to shares tips & tricks to work smarter. Back in 2013, stories were introduced to Social Media by SnapChat and ever since have been adopted by other social platforms such as Facebook & Instagram. Instagram, however, took stories to new heights.

According to 99Firms, Instagram stories consisted of an online social format of 15-second videos that has a broad audience, constituting almost a third of all the social platforms that use a stories-based format. 

500 million Instagram members use Stories daily. According to 99Firm’s data, 60% of millennials watch & post-Instagram Stories. Davis added that an entire generation has grown-up with stories as a way of conversing. He deduced that the younger users & professionals are more comfortable conversing with an ephemeral form of content than posting updates and as such ‘LinkedIn Stories’ are a perfect fit for the scenario. The content that survives monetarily rather than occupying a reserved spot in the feed is preferred. How ‘LinkedIn Stories’ will fit into the LinkedIn’s professional networking realm is something that remains speculative as of now; though it seems to be a promising move to engross the attention of younger professionals in particular. LinkedIn for the time is testing it’s LinkedIn Stories’ functionality internally & although it’s not definite whether this functionality will be added to our news feeds, optimistic comment from Davies sparks a hope. Davies has disclosed in his blog post, “We can’t wait to test it with our members in the coming months.” So, fingers crossed for ‘LinkedIn Stories’.

About LinkedIn:

Founded in the year 2003, the company has established its individuality as an online professional networking site specializing in People Search, Jobs, Company Search, Address Book, Advertising, and Professional Identity & Group Collaboration. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA & has more than 675+ million members worldwide, making it the world’s largest professional network. The company has offices across the globe & has a diversified business model fetching revenue from Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, and Premium Subscription products.

About Forbes:

Forbes is a global media, branding & technology company. Founded in the year 1917, the company is headquartered in Jersey City, NJ & is focused on amassing news & information about businesses, investments, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership & affluent lifestyles. The brand extensions of Forbes Media include conferences, education, real estate, financial services & technology license agreements.