IDS-411 Final Paper
LinkedIn has become the world’s largest social media platform for professional networking. Unlike other social media sites, you will not dance videos, silly challenges or family photos. Instead, LinkedIn feeds are filled with posts from people or businesses in your network celebrating a promotion, hyping an upcoming conference, or sharing a newly published article. While some may have considered this type of content boring, LinkedIn’s innovations in connecting people and businesses have produced the growth of LinkedIn to over 900 million users worldwide.
LinkedIn is constantly enhancing the user’s experience by adding new functionalities, tools, and features. A focus on expanding user base to include professionals around the world by adding features like language and local content, allowed LinkedIn to have a global presence. Even with several powerhouse competitors in the recruitment space, LinkedIn has become the leading employee recruiting tool. LinkedIn has become the “go to” place for people to find business related content. In 1995, LinkedIn launched its LinkedIn Learning platform to further cement itself as the leading site to visit for professional growth and development by additional job training and education modules.
When creating a new LinkedIn account, I am prompted to answer the standard bunch of social media questions that are mandatory to be able to create an account: name, where I live, preferred language. Where LinkedIn differentiates itself from other social media sites, is that I am prompted enter many categories of optional information to basically create my résumé on the site: current job title and company, past titles and organizations, degrees I’ve earned, certifications I’ve obtained. I can even write a short bio if I want to draw recruiters to my newly created profile. Next, I’m encouraged to make Connections. Since I have already entered my work history and universities I’ve attended, LinkedIn is able to make recommendations of other people I might know who have worked at, or attended the same schools.
As I explored the data, a few patterns of organization became apparent. Overall, the user portion of the sitemap could be split into two categories: My account details that only I can see and control, and the content I share with others. Following that, the content I share with others can be broken down to two more categories, Specific Information (what I put out on my profile page) and Unspecific Information (the content I create or interact with).
The way I have entered my information, and what I am finding as click around the sites reminds me of the McManus video’s discussion about layered semantics. Not only are people like me entering our information, but so are businesses and other organizations. Those businesses and organizations are likely entering their own different levels of details as well. All these different levels of datapoints build on top of each other to create the entirety of the complex website. There is clear levels of separation of who enters what, and what is shared, and the small user might not fully comprehend how it fits into the over data structure.
After entering all the required, and optional information to start my account, I’m able to see how LinkedIn displays all the data I’ve entered. Each of the categories I entered data are displayed on my profile page in chronological order. At this point I recall our week 2 discussion that data is not information, and that we must do something to make data information. As discussed in week 2 Hinton reading, something is always nested in something else. What LinkedIn has done with the data entered is to create taxonomies based on categories. These taxonomies help set different contexts to each type of user, the users’ content, and the user’s purpose for visiting the site. The different contexts help build the site’s entire environment.
Navigating the site is incredibly easy with a visually appealing user interface, along with fields and icons that clearly illustrate their actionable purpose. Data is displayed sufficiently to allow me to make decisions or engage with the site content. Through use of the global search field, the categories icons for Home, My Account, Job, Messaging, and Notification or a “Discover More” action button I can easily analyze the organization schema to narrow through an extremely large variety of data to accomplish a variety of different uses of the site. Switching between these two different contexts is made simple by clicking either the Home or Me icon. In addition to the categories, I also notice that I can edit the widget at the top my profile page, to highlight information I want shown at the top without having to scroll through my whole profile.
LinkedIn appears to have spent a great deal of time developing storyboards and user flows to support users create and share content. In addition to having a prominently displayed widget to “Start a post, try writing something with AI” widget. Recent additions to this widget are the ability to create Media, Event and Write article. Clicking any one of these actions buttons launches me into a new experience to create the selected related post type. The ability to write the post with AI is only available to folks who pay for LinkedIn’s premium service. Also, when creating a post, I could determine who can see my latest content. This is a nice way for LinkedIn to build trust with the platform, this option lets me know that my content can be protected. This option also allows me to share my content with a specific group. For example, I am a member of a business resource group at my employer. This option allows me to share content specifically to the members of my group.
Like many other companies, not just social media platforms, LinkedIn could leverage the capabilities of AI. As a leader in professional networking, new AI experiences could help facilitate content creation, improve job search matches for both recruiters and job seekers, and help the platform better analyze their users for better targeted marketing and engagement. Since LinkedIn has become a fantastic way to connect recruiters and job seekers, a well-constructed AI experience could 1) help the job seekers write better résumés that appeal to hiring managers, 2) match those hiring managers with appropriate candidates. Also, LinkedIn has become the premier resource for professional development and skilling up work-related expertise, LinkedIn could improve its learning content to empower users to constantly improve their qualifications.
Using AI to improve the user experience, and keeping the focus of the platform narrowly targeted to professional networking are ways that LinkedIn can continue maintain its perception as a trustworthy resource for information and engagement. Staying engaged with users and accepting criticism and feedback to constantly improve the sites functionality is another way to build trust with users. Lastly, I have always appreciated that even though I have a free account, I am not bombarded with ads. Of course, I know that LinkedIn is selling access to my feel exploited, and that to me is very valuable in feeling that I can trust LinkedIn with my data.
Along with the ability to keep in touch with former colleagues, LinkedIn has an add-on platform for LinkedIn Learning. This is probably my favorite feature of being a LinkedIn user. Conveniently, I can assess the Learning module directly from an icon on my home screen. Based on information I added when creating my account, and people or organization I follow on the “main” LinkedIn page Learning will recommend different modules that are appealing to me.
Many options for engagement are available to me even though I subscribe with only a free account. As the adage goes, “if it’s free, you are the product”, meaning that LinkedIn sells space on my feed to advertisers. I do have a few ads on my feed, along with a widget in the side draw with more ads. At this time of LinkedIn’s development, I can scroll past ads that I do want to engage with. This is different from other social media platforms that require me to watch the advertisement to read the article or view the video. I would imagine that individuals who have Premium accounts will not see these advertisements at all.
Another way that LinkedIn keeps people coming back to the site is the job finding functionality. I have been able to search for and apply to jobs through the site. Interfaces from LinkedIn to hiring companies make switch contexts to new sites accessible. Also, I found my current job because the recruiter was able to review my qualifications, work experience and education. He saw that I was a good match for the role he was looking to fill.
LinkedIn has become one of the most influential professional platforms in the world because if its constant innovation, world-wide presence, focus on the users experience and career development. It’s best in class organization of information, context and content help create easy to navigate user journeys. Its dedication to protecting access to users data, along with the ability to recommend appropriate content builds its reputation as a trustworthy business networking platforming. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence to enhance the future of this already fantastic website.
Resources:
The Evolution of LinkedIn and Mine From 200 Million Members in 2012 to 930 Million Today | LinkedIn
The Evolution of LinkedIn Into a Powerful Marketing Tool
The Evolution of Social Media: How Did It Begin, and Where Could it Go Next?
