LinkedIn Updates: Stories and Helping Jobseekers Get Back to Work

LinkedIn has carried out tons of work in recent years to update and improve the platform, and it’s paying off. With 250 million monthly active users and the way users interact with the platform constantly evolving, this was clearly an intentional choice on LinkedIn’s behalf. 

In recent weeks you may have noticed a big update to the appearance of LinkedIn. The platform has had a theme overhaul, with lighter colours, a fresh layout and overall following the “cleaner” aesthetic we have seen rolling out across many social platforms recently. Again, this seems to have been fully thought through by LinkedIn. When referring to these changes, LinkedIn explained:

“Two years ago, our brand evolved to better reflect LinkedIn’s community of members and organizations that come together to help, support, and inspire one another. Now, we’re bringing the next chapter of this brand evolution to life across our platform with an entirely new look and feel that embodies our diverse, inclusive, warm and welcoming community.”

As a typically professional platform that encourages the development of relationships and contacts, a natural move towards this cleaner aesthetic to reflect that professional element was definitely the right move. 

The update was mainly aesthetic, but something really exciting you may have noticed when logging on to LinkedIn to see what your professional acquaintances are up to is – stories! That’s right, stories. Stories first broke onto the social media scene with Snapchat way back in 2013 (if you can believe that!). Instagram answered the popular demand with their own version of stories in 2016. The following year, Facebook finally caught up with the game and introduced their own version of stories. 

Now, in 2020, LinkedIn brings us stories too. Before you jump over to your favourite desktop browser and declare, “hang on! I’ve not seen this yet…”’ it’s worth noting that stories are only available on the LinkedIn mobile app. This may have been a very intentional move from LinkedIn to encourage users to use the app more frequently. LinkedIn remains one of the platforms that is more commonly used on desktop, with only 57% of traffic coming from the mobile app. Will we see these stats change going forward, with more users swapping to mobile to take advantage of the new stories feature? 

What else is new with LinkedIn? Over the summer, they launched a global skills initiative which was aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25million people across the globe before the end of 2020. This year has seen significant economic hardship as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with many people facing job loss and serious struggles for industries like hospitality and travel. 

LinkedIn hopes that by giving free access to different training and skills, that those who are searching for jobs in the current difficult landscape will have more luck. You can find out more about this scheme on LinkedIn’s blog.