LinkedIn’s Evolution to attract the Gen Z

If you Google for what is Gen Z or the Generation Z, it literally says that these are kids born after 2003-04 and are categorised because of their increased knowledge of internet and obsession with their phones and social media platforms. While this might seem a bit extreme, we could not disagree! The youth of today are literally living their lives on their phones! And hence, every digital platform has been racing to put up relevant features that can attract these kids.

And the latest contender into this race is the business and employment-oriented service provider, LinkedIn. The Microsoft owned product has started testing many features to attract the next generation kids on their platform and they are doing everything in their power to keep LinkedIn relevant to the youth or as the millennial would say, “Lit” to them.

There are many features in Pipeline that LinkedIn has been trying out and the major change that they are willing to initiate is the latest Internet obsession, “disappearing stories” under the name of “Student Voices”.

According to the LinkedIn, this feature is in beta testing and it will be soon available to the university students of USA. Just like other platforms, students will be able to share videos which will be visible on the top side of their profile and will stay there for 2 weeks! But, unlike other platforms, these videos will remain permanent in their recent activity tab. And students will only be allowed to share their videos and not pictures.

So, what students can do is share their campus competition videos, internship videos or other such information that can create a strong impression and help them catch attention of the recruiters. But, there are two other possibilities with this feature, one is the students might feel that the stories will disappear like the other platforms and might upload content that might degrade their image to the recruiters. And to the ones that are aware that the stories will appear permanently in their profiles, they might refrain from sharing the stories on Student Voices.

But, there are a lots of ifs and buts associated with this and all the clarity is possible only if they make the feature live. But, it is clearly visible that this feature is a desperate attempt from LinkedIn to make the platform relevant to the next generation. Also, if the feature works properly, just like other platforms, the students will have to come to the platform on regular internals to check the activity on the post and hence will make them habituated to the platform. Also, the recruiters will have a better view of the timeline of the student and their potential candidate hence they too will have to stick to LinkedIn.

Also, LinkedIn can monetize this content by keeping the access to the stories only to the premium members forcing the recruiters to pay to view the content and they can also opt to show ads in between the stories like other platforms.

Apart from that, there are also other minor changes done to the platform for the millennial like the GIF comments, location sharing like Facebook and allowing other reaction buttons like “Hmm” “Clap” “Support” and other such features.

So, while the world is moving away from innovation and is clinging to the singularity of the platforms, we are in for a treat as to how the users will react to this evolution of LinkedIn. Stay tuned to our blog to know if this was a “HMM” or a “Clap” move from LinkedIn.