Since the start of the pandemic, as office workers missed in-person interactions with colleagues, many people turned to LinkedIn to help make up for what they had lost.
The site now has more than 830 million users who generate about 8 million posts and comments daily.
During the pandemic, many people wanted to post about social justice topics that affected their work lives.
Now, users find on a typical day that between job listings and, “I’m happy to announce” posts, are viral selfies of people crying, announcements about weddings and long reflections about overcoming illnesses.
Not all are happy about the changes. Some said they find they cannot use the site in the same way.
“Early in the pandemic, we started seeing content we really hadn’t seen before,” said Daniel Roth, a vice president and the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. He said he noticed people posting about mental health, burnout and stress. “These were unusual posts for people where they were being much more vulnerable on LinkedIn,” he said.
LinkedIn walks a fine line as it tries to encourage engagement on the site while protecting the professional context users expect.
Rose, 26, said she used to think of LinkedIn as an online résumé. “In my understanding, it was kind of used for old people,” she said. But her thinking has changed. “I 100 per cent view it as a social media platform now.” She added that she found commenters more positive and mature than audiences on TikTok, where she has 2.7 million followers.
Since the pandemic began, Jiménez, who lives in Madrid, said her feed has become so cluttered with people’s deeply personal updates — stories of coping with a loved one’s death or overcoming an illness — that it is nearly unusable for professional tasks.
“Now the feed is an obstacle,” she said. “I had to change my way of working on LinkedIn.” She now uses keywords to directly search for people’s profiles and avoids the homepage.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/how-linkedin-users-are-blurring-the-lines-between-home-and-work-20220918-p5bixl.html