Special Edition: we listened to your feedback and here’s what we’re doing + Inspiring conversations about #Creativity, #Accessibility and #Inclusion

Hey LinkedIn community,

Today’s edition is focused on feedback -- your feedback. At the top of our list of values at LinkedIn is being members-first. Everything we build, everything we do, is first and foremost about creating economic opportunity for our members. Every day, I get feedback, ideas, and suggestions from many of you (thank you!), and last month, I asked you how we can make LinkedIn better for you:

I’m grateful to all of you who responded. This post was reshared many times and the response has been tremendous with thousands of members across the world offering great feedback. I’ve read each one so far and shared them across our team so we can better improve our product experience to meet your needs. We continuously listen closely to your suggestions & ideas and it inspires us to find new ways to deliver value to you, so please keep it coming.

In today’s edition, I wanted to share the feedback summary and takeaways with all of you. While this will not cover everything we heard, there were approximately five main categories mentioned across feed, inbox, career tools, analytics & insights, and even the metaverse. We have plans across each area and we’re working hard to bring those to life very soon.

Before we dive into it, I wanted to start with one of the top requests we got -- a laughing emoji reaction 😂. We hear you loud & clear and we agree. Humor is indeed a serious business ;)

And now, on to our product (feedback) updates…

1 You want better ways to curate your feed experience 

The top product experience you highlighted was the feed. We heard that you want a better way to curate your feed to see content from people that matter, talking about topics you care about most. This can be content from your connections, people you follow, or people outside your network who are relevant to your professional interests (e.g. experts or professionals in your field of interest). 

You also want to keep your LinkedIn feed a place for professional, respectful conversations on topics that matter most to you -- just like you would in your ideal work environment. 

Lastly, you want an easier way to discover relevant new groups and see group conversations show up more regularly in your feed. 

What’s happening today:

• Putting more control in your hands. Your experience on LinkedIn can change dramatically depending on whom you are connected with and what your professional goals are. Our goal is to give you control over what you see in your feed. Simply unfollow connections whose posts are no longer relevant to you & explicitly share feedback with us about the topics you are not interested in, including political content. It’s easy to do - if you see a post you’re not interested in, simply tap the 3 dots icon on the top right corner, tap “I don’t want to see this” and take action. 
• Discover conversations that matter most to you professionally. LinkedIn is home to world-renowned experts in every field, from agriculture to gaming, and from cloud software to actual meteorologists who study real clouds. You can find those conversations by simply following those top voices (e.g. check out the lists in tech, finance, venture capital, and media, as well as, in career, marketing, sports, and health care) or searching for topics (from big oil greenwashing to Beijing 2022 winter Olympics).
• Discover communities that matter most to you professionally. We’ve been investing in our groups and events experiences on LinkedIn. With groups & live events, members can connect with relevant professionals in a safe space to discuss, ask and get help around a topic of interest. For example, check out Monday Night Mentorship Collective, a career acceleration community for marketers of color, or Remote Workers on LinkedIn, a group that brings together remote working professionals from around the world to share, discuss, and exchange ideas. 

What’s coming next: We’re continually investing in improving your feed experience, from relevance improvements to surfacing relevant topics, creators, groups, and events. We’re also investing in new & exciting tools to help creators best express their ideas, as well as, in tools for group and event organizers to better moderate & elevate the quality of their communities. 

2 You want more ways to organize your inbox & connections

Many of you shared that LinkedIn is an important part of your daily workflow, and you need better ways to organize and manage your LinkedIn experience, especially your inbox & connections. Your inbox is extremely valuable to you, not only as a way to stay connected with your colleagues & connections (especially as many are working from home) but also as a way to be discovered for great career opportunities. I heard from many of you that you would like to see an ability to filter for key conversations, set reminders, and allow for auto-responses.  

Those of you with large networks asked for ways to segment and organize your connections (e.g. organize close colleagues, filter by the strength of a connection, or add notes).

What’s happening today:

• Engage with a richer messaging experience. We know that 1:1 and group conversations are an important part of your LinkedIn experience, and we are continuously investing in more ways to enrich it. Whether you’re catching up in a virtual group get-together or chatting about potential career opportunities, you can now bring that conversation to life on video directly from a message. 
• Manage and organize your inbox. We recently added easier ways to join group conversations, a nudge when there is an important unread message, the ability to edit and delete messages sent, as well as, a way to bulk manage your inbox. We also rolled out the ability to set personalized away messages for those who have a premium subscription.
• Organize, find and curate your network. Through your My Network and Search experiences, you can easily filter connections by locations, company, school, industry, services, etc. You can also choose to unfollow connections or mute people you follow. 

What’s coming next: We are currently working on intelligently personalizing your inbox experience so you can focus on what matters most to you. The more you’ll use it, the better it will get. 

3 You are looking for more tools to advance your career

It was great to read all of the ideas and suggestions for how the LinkedIn community can help advance your career. Many were interested in more tools to help facilitate career conversations, mentorship, and advice. We already see that searches on LinkedIn for mentees and mentors doubled during the first half of January 2022 compared with the same period a year ago as more people seek out others for advice.

If you’re looking for mentorship & advice, the LinkedIn community can help. 

What’s happening today:

• Search for topics to find experts and advice. You can search for content and keywords related to your area of interest and follow individuals within that space. Aggie Branczyk shared a post about the benefits of mentorship, with tips on how to be and find a good mentor. One of her tips is reminding people that mentors learn from the relationship as much as they teach.
• Join live events to help you progress in your career. We launched an entirely new interactive Audio Events experience to help organizers and attendees actively engage in great conversations. Those can be thought leadership sessions, job fairs events, or recruiting Q&A sessions. All members can now tune in, see who else is in the event, connect with one another, and even join the hosts in the live conversation simply by raising their hands. For recruiters, this is also a great way to connect with potential candidates. 
• Learning Courses + Live Q&A with instructors. Learning is key for career advancement. And now, in addition to being able to join learning courses, you can also engage with Live Office hours with experts to learn about many topics, from communicating effectively and getting hired, to even how to start your own podcast. 
• New LinkedIn Podcast Network pilot. Now you can connect with your favorite podcast hosts. With this week's launch of our Podcast Network pilot, you’ll have access to programming and conversations from industry-leading creators such as Morra Aarons-Mele, Jonathan Fields, Mita Mallick, and Dee C. Marshall, as well as shows created in-house by LinkedIn News. 

What’s coming next: We have exciting roadmaps across events, groups, and learning products that will help support career conversations in a deeper and richer way. Stay tuned for more information and resources in upcoming updates.  

4 You want better ways to measure how your content is performing 

We continuously hear from creators that they want new and better ways to measure their impact. We know how important it is for you to understand who’s reading and engaging with your content. We heard you would like to see more content analytics and understand which pieces of content perform best. In addition, you care a lot about growing your audience and are looking to learn more about what industries or job functions they are in, engagement patterns, and any other useful demographic information that helps you measure performance.

What’s coming next: We know it’s important to understand what content is resonating with your audience and our team has been hard at work building new analytics for our creators. Soon, creators will be able to get analytics on their individual posts and overall performance, across content & audience. Stay tuned for our future releases in the upcoming weeks.

5 You are curious about bringing Crypto to the LinkedIn Metaverse

We heard great ideas around LinkedIn as the place in the metaverse for professional networking using blockchain & NFT technology to power identities, networks, communities, content creation, and skills. Please keep sharing those ideas with us. 

When we think of any new technology, we start with the needs of our members and customers and how we can best connect them to economic opportunity. Then, we look at how we can best leverage innovative technologies to help meet those needs. The topics of Crypto, NFT, blockchain, and metaverse are all discussed frequently at LinkedIn as we continue to look for better ways to enhance your experience. Stay tuned for more!

If you haven’t already, check out this post by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, about how the metaverse is already here.

Every day I’m amazed by the heart of the LinkedIn community and the incredible sense of purpose, passion, generosity, and humor that is showcased through conversations across the platform. I love seeing all the unique and inspiring posts－and I’m excited to share some of my favorites with you.  

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Karen X. Cheng, a creative director, gives a behind-the-scenes look of her teaching Will Smith (the Fresh Prince himself!) how to edit his videos.

Mikayla Smith, a meteorologist, shares a video of herself communicating in sign language while delivering the weather report. Members applaud Smith’s efforts to include the hard-of-hearing community in her work.

Ryann Diem, a former professional athlete, shares how he went from the NFL to starting a garbage bin cleaning business. 

Marisa Hamamoto, the founder of Infinite Flow Dance -- a dance company that employs disabled and non-disabled dancers, shares her journey and advice for inclusivity and accessibility for all creators.

Liz Fosslien, head of content at Humu, gives her followers great insight and advice into her creative process and go-to tools. 

With deep gratitude,

Tomer