LinkedIn might seem old in the timeline of social media platforms, founded back in 2003, but it is still growing quickly. With 950 million members it will soon be joining Instagram, Facebook and TikTok in the rarefied air of the billion user club. And it is growing engagement, with the number of LinkedIn posts growing 41% between 2021 and 2023.
Amongst all of this growth, this Business Insider article asks: why did LinkedIn get so weird? From oversharing personal information to clearly fake bragging, their answer is simple: no one know what it means to be “professional” anymore.
If you’re a LinkedIn user, you’ve noticed it. The rise of the LinkedIn influencer – putting up daily polls and personal stories – doing anything to juice engagement. LinkedIn has always been a weird place, a highly sanitised, corporate social media platform. The friends who post pictures with a beer on Instagram, show up on LinkedIn with a suit and tie celebrating their employer’s recent quarter. But it has morphed in the past few years. It is as if the rise of Instagram and YouTube influencers has sparked a rush for a group of LinkedIn users to become corporate influencers.
The unfortunate thing for a lot of people is that LinkedIn is an important tool for their jobs. As LinkedIn has changed over the past few years, users now have to navigate stories of people sharing stories of messy divorces and their struggles to pee in public (yes, these are two real posts mentioned in this article). So rest assured, it’s not just you, LinkedIn has gotten weird.
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