They're trying to be a site that makes a lot of money from ads. To do that they need to get people to spend a lot of time there. To do that they need an infinitely scrolling feed that has addictive characteristics. What else are people going to spend a lot of time on there? Scrolling through their contacts?

Oh, you meant what are they trying to be that's helpful to the user? Doesn't matter.

I wonder, is "being facebook" is that an organic goal LinkedIn came up with, or did they pick that up from their users?

I suspect the user base has largely driven it. From the beginning it seemed that regardless of the stated purpose users wanted to use LinkedIn as a "different facebook". Personally I hate that, but a lot of people have been doing it for many years.

> I suspect the user base has largely driven it.

In what way? Users/customers do not generally drive development. Indirect measurements of users do, such as measuring "engagement".

At best, what likely happened was A/B testing showed "what users want", which rarely and only by chance intersected with what users actually want, and instead showed over and over that socials media patterns (light and dark) hijacking attention drives engagement.

Oh I disagree greatly.

If people didn't want to use twitter, they wouldn't and it would be gone. But users do use it, and even the folks who tell me they're upset ABOUT Twitter, most choose to be there.

Whatever the reason they make that choice, at some point that's on them.

If the choice is "use the platform everyone else is on" vs "don't exist", many people will choose the former.

That's not the same thing as wanting to use the platform.

If you feel like not being on twitter means "don't exist" as an individual... I feel like that also is a choice / lifestyle you chose.

I can't imagine letting a service like that define things for me like that.

> I can't imagine letting a service like that define things for me like that.

Yes, that's very clear. Everyone is super impressed with how free your thinking is.

However, you completely missed the point of my comment by interpreting my hyperbole so literally.

Nah, basically every other social type thing got screwed by FB convincing everyone that MAU's (i.e. the metric FB looked best on) was the right metric, when it clearly wasn't.

Like, LinkedIn only needs MAUs who are trying to sell something or looking for a job, they 100% don't need people to log in every day (as their ads business is only a small proportion of revenue).

I don't buy entirely into "FB did it" kinda thing. They found it ... but users LOVE it. That's a choice in the last part.

Some users love it, the type who want to sell their every thought online to anyone who can tolerate them.

Other users (almost everyone I know) absolutely loathe it. It is hands-down the worst service I have an account with, but it's also practically required to get a job if you don't have lucky personal connections. I was hoping TFA was actually about leaving as a user, that it might be inspiration for me to free myself.

They made loads of product changes to get people to engage in that way. As an example, showing who viewed your profile in the email vs needing to log in.

I've always thought LinkedIn was just Facebook for Business™ - has it ever been anything else?

It was always to some extent, but the feed was a lot more formal IMO at the beginning. Content was more like actual articles and links.

But I think users just love / gravitate towards a more facebook style feed.

Part of that might be the "reward for spamming" - any "social media" site is always amazing at the beginning, because only the die-hards know about it and the spammers have no return on investment.

LinkedIn has slightly different style of spammer, but it's basically the end game for anything.

Yes. We hired everyone from meta starting in 2020 and so far this strategy is holding true

Interesting ok. Good luck