My Initial Take on LinkedIn’s New Design Change

The hot-take you probably weren’t looking for.

I’m just seeing the change to LinkedIn’s feed (timeline? what do they call it?) and I’ll be honest — when I saw it loading, I let out an audible groan.

After digesting the new look for all of two minutes, here are my initial thoughts, but I’m interested in hearing anyone else’s.

1. While seeing your total profile views is helpful from the home screen, you still need Premium to see the total number of views beyond in-week views. You also see total article views which is great for folks who leverage that tool frequently enough to need that info. However, the total profile views really — to me — is just trying to tee up the upgrade to Premium.
2. While I understand the move from Messaging as a tab to Messaging as an always-present chad widget, I personally don’t have enough ongoing conversations on LinkedIn to see a ton of value in the move. However for folks in Recruiting may enjoy it. But even still, wouldn’t I want to see a dashboard of all open conversations?
3. The new feed layout also seems to be emphasizing the “ads you may be interested in” section. Right now, this section occupies the length of about one LinkedIn post. But will this soon expand to meet the length of your full window? This may be the first step in increasing the reach and visibility of the advertising space, which could be a blessing for advertisers but a headache to general users.
4. In general, the whole update looks to be ramping up the “Facebookiness” of LinkedIn. Probably on purpose, but I can see this new layout encouraging LinkedIn users to continue posting “Facebooky” posts onto LinkedIn — a trend that already was creeping up on us at a discouraging rate.

File this one under knee-jerk, social update overreactions, but I’m interested in hearing others’ thoughts.