LinkedIn Is Rolling Out Stories, For Reasons That Are Not Immediately Obvious

If you’ve ever had the sort of career that requires you to get a LinkedIn account, you will know that LinkedIn is hell. A maelstrom of confusing notifications, unwanted emails, networking requests, and almost impossibly bland corporate-type people posting 2000-word screeds about how ‘business is the essence of success’, which means nothing. It’s bad, is what I’m saying.

[jwplayer gvkTjsCy]

While most people who have used it would struggle to believe that it could get any worse, that belief might well be challenged by this: LinkedIn is gettings its own Snapchat-style stories feature.

As reported by TechCrunch, the feature will first be rolled out to students at universities and colleges in the US, allowing them to post short videos to their ‘campus playlist’, where they will stay for a week. However, the videos will remain permanently on the profile of the user that posted it.

Product manager Isha Patel told TechCrunch that it’s sort of an extension of their resume, but more personal:

It’s a great way for students to build out their profile and have this authentic content that shows who they are and what their academic and professional experiences have been. Having these videos live on their profile can help students grow their network, prepare for life after graduation, and help potential employers learn more about them.

It seems difficult to imagine that potential employers would want to sift through videos of students faffing about at desk jobs or that that’s the sort of content people would want to record and upload, but I am, admittedly, not an expert.

According to TechCrunch, LinkedIn confirmed that they plan to roll it out to other sets of users eventually as well.

A screenshot of the app posted to Twitter shows a similar UI to Facebook and Instagram, cementing it in the canon of gradually homogenising social media apps:


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At PEDESTRIAN.TV, we independently choose and write about stuff we love and think you’ll froth too. We have affiliate partnerships so we might get a bit of money from any purchase you make based on our recs, cool? Cool. FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV