Up until we only knew LinkedIn as a website that is only reserved for professionals. The website helps individuals come in contact with employers, share resumes and land a job. At the same time, LinkedIn also serves a cool social media platform. It works similarly to Facebook where you can post statuses, connect with people and, of course, exchange messages. Now, the professional-social platform is considering to introduce Snapchat-like stories. LinkedIn says that it is currently testing this "new conversational format" for business conversations internally.
LinkedIn's Head of Content, Pete Davies stated that these new conversational formats will allow for a more casual way of interacting while still being focused on business aspects of things. Davies also imagines that some companies can come up with more creative ways to share "key moments from work events" or "tips and tricks that help us work smarter."
Third time's a charm
In 2018, LinkedIn had a poor attempt at becoming more relevant to the social media trend of that time. The company introduced video filters, which did not age quite well as it did on other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. So, one may look at these story features that LinkedIn is aiming at from the same cynical eyes.
The story feature was originally introduced by Snapchat in 2013. It was soon adopted by Instagram and it became even more popular in 2016. Other popular social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube would also go ahead to shamelessly copy the idea.
Well, this isn't the first time that LinkedIn dabbled with "stories." In 2018, the company introduced a feature called "Student Voices," which allowed college students to post video content to a "Campus Playlist." Once the story was posted, it stayed on the top of all content in the news feed.
The reason that Student Voices did not grow well was because of its limited scope and the audience that could use it. Moreover, this feature was also very limited it terms of features like Instagram offers. The new story feature, however, seems to offer a robust service.
Since LinkedIn is testing the story feature internally, there isn't any guarantee if it actually launches the service to the public. Whenever it does, we'll make sure to let you know.
