LinkedIn Fix List

LinkedIn Fix List

Last update to this article: 13 March 2021.

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As a longtime LinkedIn nerd, I've decided to log the things that I think need to be fixed or improved here. Hop into the comments if you think I ought to add something to the list below.

Anything that's fixed is moved to the bottom of the article, in the "NOW FIXED" section.

OUTSTANDING ISSUES/SUGGESTIONS

Add a “see first” feature to ensure you see content from your favourite people

A lot of LinkedIn posts are irrelevant to me so I'd like a "see first" feature. This would let me prioritise posts by my favourite people.

I suspect LinkedIn will never do this, as it might overlap too much with what they let you do via the paid Sales Navigator service.

Add a “lists” feature, as per Twitter

It would be useful to create public and private lists of LinkedIn users, so I can see content from the creators I want. I suspect this is likely to be for Premium members only. We can but wish.

(Twitter does it for free.)

Date and time on LinkedIn posts

Instead of display relative dates on LinkedIn posts – e.g. "18h", "3d" – it would be best to show the exact date and time when a post was made.

I can get this data via SHIELD Analytics but not everyone uses that and it shouldn't be necessary to rely on a third-party tool for such a basic thing.

Turn off like notifications without turning off comments

There's no good way of suppressing notifications about likes/reactions without also stopping notifications about comments.

I don't care about seeing notifications about likes/reactions and would like to hide them from my view.

Batch delete some/all notifications

Once I've dealt with a notification, I delete it. That's my way of keeping my LinkedIn experience manageable. Rather than deleting notifications individually, I'd like to be able to delete them in batches.

A set of delete tick boxes next to each notification would help, as would a "delete all" option.

Automatically include person's name when replying to a comment

(Suggested by Louisa van Vessem)

Some replies to comments automatically include the person's name, so that the tag generates a notification to them. Other times, you have to enter the person's name yourself to tag them.

It would be better if clicking/tapping the Reply button would automatically put the other person's name in on every occasion.

Recent comment order

By default, post comments are ordered by "Most relevant". This means that LinkedIn shows you what it thinks are the most relevant comments first. The ordering differs depending on the viewer – what I see as the Top comment may not be what you see even though we're looking at the same post.

You can reorder the comments by Recent, to see them in date order. But LinkedIn doesn't remember this choice next time. I'd like this to be a "sticky" setting that applies to all posts unless and until you choose to switch back to Top.

Recent comment ordering consistency on desktop and mobile

When viewing comments, switching to Recent shows you the newest comment at the top of the comments list on LinkedIn desktop.

But on LinkedIn mobile, the newest comment is shown at the bottom of the list. (I've checked on iOS; not sure if the same happens on Android.)

It would be better to be consistent about whether the newest comments should appear at the top or bottom of the list when comments are ordered with the Recent option.

Add a featured comment option 

To stop useful post and article comments being buried, post authors should be able to select a "featured comment" that jumps to the top of the comments list.

Edit video captions after posting

(Suggested by Meryl Evans)

After posting a video containing SRT captions, it should be possible to edit the post and replace the SRT file.

Add a Videos tab in the Activity section

The Activity section lets you see filtered views of people's LinkedIn posts, articles and documents. A new tab for videos would be useful.

Audio message posts

(Suggested by Mark Stringer)

There should be a post content type to support the sharing of audio content. At the moment, you have to post a video if you want to share audio.

Such audio content should also be embeddable in LinkedIn articles, either as a full audio post or as a partial audio file without the rest of the post text (as is possible when embedding video posts in articles). Thanks to Leah Subar for the prompt about this.

Combined personal and Sales Navigator inbox

(Suggested by Janine Capaldi)

LinkedIn direct message inbox is split from the inbox used by paying Sales Navigator customers. For convenience, it would be best to see messages from both sources in one place.

Start separate direct message conversations with the same person

(Suggested by Louisa van Vessem)

Direct message conversation threads can sometimes be fragmented by accident, but it would be good to have a way of deliberately starting a new conversation separate from an existing one, perhaps to discuss separate issues.

Being able to add a conversation title to such 1-to-1 threads (as is possible with group chats) would help to keep the discussion on topic.

Location in mini bio

(Suggested by Ginny Lemarie)

The bio information that pops up when you hover over a profile could be extended to include the person's location.

Ordering of names when choosing from the tag list

(Suggested by Stella Scott)

When tagging someone with the @ symbol in a post or comment, the order of names in the popup list should be fixed to prioritise showing:

  1. the name of the person you're replying to (if it's a reply).
  2. the name of the poster (if you're commenting on someone else's post and it isn't a reply to an existing comment).
  3. the names of your most tagged people (if there's no other obvious context).

The tag popup list often contains names of people you've never tagged before while those you're actually looking for and tag regularly appear further down the list.

It would also help if you could tag by a unique username, so that you could write the tag in plain text without needing the popup list. This would then be shown as a real clickable name when the post or comment is published.

Mobile connection prompt to personalise invitations

On the LinkedIn mobile app, the Connect button ought to prompt you to send a personalised invitation by default (which you could leave empty if you wanted to).

Many people don't realise that the ellipsis (…) menu next to Connect lets you personalise invitations, which leads to lots of generic invitations being sent and then often ignored. Learn more

Option to disable connection recommendations

(Suggested by Greg Cannon)

Add an option to suppress the display of the "People you may have worked with" and "More suggestions for you" sections of the My Network tab, to stop LinkedIn suggesting names to connect with.

Add a Block option in comments

(Suggested by Louisa van Vessem)

Allow users to block people via the ellipsis (…) menu in a comment, without having to use the Report feature or visit their profile first.

Save draft posts

(Suggested by Luiz Carlos de Oliveira Junior)

You can save draft articles and even draft direct messages but not draft posts in the main feed. These should be autosaved and ideally synced between mobile and desktop views, so you could pick up where you left off across devices.

It is possible to save the current post as a draft on mobile, by exiting the compose window and tapping Save draft. You cannot save multiple drafts, though, and the saved draft is not available on desktop.

Animated GIFs in comments

I'm not a big fan of GIFs, but a lot of people expect them to work in comments just as they do in posts. There should also be standardised GIF behaviour between desktop and mobile (animations can turn static on mobile).

Animated company page icons

GIF support should be reinstated for company page icons. Some company pages still have these but if they try to replace their existing GIF, they will lose the animation feature altogether.

Automatically remove confirmation popups in bottom-left corner

(Suggested by Graham Hughes)

The confirmation popups in the bottom-left corner of desktop do not need to be "sticky". They should disappear automatically after a short set time, to avoid the need for multiple clicks to dismiss stacks of notifications.

Also, the placement of these notifications on mobile mean that they temporarily obscure access to the Messaging section.

Better notification display

(Suggested by Louisa van Vessem)

Group notifications together for a given post, e.g. "post X has 3 new comments, 6 new likes" or otherwise highlight what has yet to be addressed in responding to notifications.

Reorder profile sections

(Suggested by Heidi Medina)

Allow profile sections to be reordered. This used to be possible but the drag handles have been gone for some time. Some people don't want their Recommendations section to be buried near the bottom of the screen, for example.

Reorder recommendations

(Suggested by Nidhi Prabhu)

Recommendations should be draggable so that they can be reordered. The current ordering is to show the newest recommendations first, but this can mean that more valuable recommendations get buried.

Number of posts by people you follow

(Suggested by Mark Williams)

LinkedIn's Following page shows the people you follow, ordered by who has posted most "this week". It would be good to know when LinkedIn defines a week to begin.

Also, the actual figures shown next to each person's name don't seem to accurately reflect the true number of posts they've made. How are these numbers calculated?

Save and tag searches by sector

(Suggested by Angus Grady)

For advanced searchers, allow searches to be tagged by sector.

Bookmark/favourite comments

(Suggested by Angus Grady)

Add an ellipsis (…) menu option to mark a comment as a bookmark or favourite for later review.

Who's viewed your profile source

(Suggested by Angus Grady)

In the "Who's viewed your profile" panel of names, include a source for how the person found your profile, e.g. via a tag, search, hashtag click.

Download post content and stats

(Suggested by Heidi Medina)

LinkedIn's data download feature lets you grab a lot of data about your account but it doesn't let you download your old posts and their stats. This data is still stored in LinkedIn, because you can access old posts in the feed indefinitely if you know the individual URLs, but it's not available for download.

If we truly own our data on LinkedIn, we should be allowed to extract this content.

Replace or add images in edited posts and comments

Editing a post containing an image lets you change the alt text (used for accessibility), but it doesn't let you replace or remove the image itself. If the image was badly sized or has been superseded by something sharper or more relevant, it would help to be able to replace the existing image with a new one.

You can't add, edit or remove images on edited comments either. When editing a comment containing an image, there is an X button on the image, but clicking it seems to refresh the page without deleting anything.

Add rich-text formatting options

It would help to be able to use true bold, italics and list features in posts.

For example, messaging platform Slack supports Markdown, where you can use asterisks and underscores to indicate that words ought to be set in bold and italics respectively.

Such a change on LinkedIn would add virtually no storage burden to the post data and yet would help the user experience a lot.

You can already add faux bold and italics to LinkedIn text using a Unicode text generator such as YayText. Here's an example of my name: ???????? ????????????????

Note that this isn't a fully accessible option (screen readers won't read such text out loud). Devices with old Android operating systems may not be able to display such text properly either.

Data download updates

(Suggested by Michael Cameron)

Add the ability to backup data to Google Drive, OneDrive and other cloud services.

Show the file size when a user chooses to back up data from LinkedIn (to give the user an idea of how long it will take).

Show a percentage complete status while a user is downloading a backup zip file of their data.

Last activity date and time

(Suggested by Kim Gelston)

Display the date and time of a person's last activity, e.g. last post, comment or reaction. Ideally, this could be displayed in searches and used as search criteria, as well as being shown on each person's profile.

An option to suppress the sharing of this information seems reasonable.

Larger/customisable font size

(Suggested by Mark Struczewski)

Increase the size of the typeface in the LinkedIn app and allow users to customise it, as per Twitter.

Removing image tags

If you're tagged in an image post (on the image itself rather than in the text of the post), the only way to remove the tag is to open the image, look for your name and then press the X button next to it.

As photo tags can be stacked, it's possible that the X button will be obscured by other nearby tags.

A better option would be for the ellipsis (…) menu on the post to contain a "remove tag" option. If you're mentioned in the text of the image post, there's a "remove mention" option in this menu. There's no reason why this shouldn't also apply to image tags.

Access to Stories

We should be able to see anyone's Story by viewing their profile rather than hoping that the Story will appear in the shortlist on the mobile home feed. 

It would also help to be able to view Stories from desktop.

Non-employees listing themselves as employees

Someone who doesn't work for an organisation is able to make it look like they're an employee. There ought to be a way for compage page admins to authorise people to be listed as part of the company. 

Anyone with a matching email domain should be automatically allowed through, e.g. someone with @microsoft.com should be trusted to work for Microsoft (they wouldn't be able to access their LinkedIn account if they were falsifying their email address).

LinkedIn Live comment notifications

Notifications for LinkedIn Live comments send the user back to the fullscreen live video instead of jumping them to see and respond to the comment that triggered the notification. The workaround is to go in to the post via the View activity feed, which is unecessarily complicated. Let the notification take the user where they expect to go.

Add folders to Messaging

A folder or labelling system is needs for Messaging so that direct messages can be categorised better. Right now, a message can be in the Inbox or the Archive – that's not enough granularity to manage the huge number of conversations some people have. A means of privately labelling or tagging some conversations would be useful. An ability to pin conversations might also help.

*** NOW FIXED ***

FIXED: Add a Block option for company pages

You can block personal profiles but not company pages, meaning that you could block a person but still see their company page content referred into your feed by people you follow who interact with content from that page.

You can now mute company page content in your feed, so that's probably good enough.

FIXED: Consistency of profile photo placement

(Suggested by Catherine Williams)

On LinkedIn desktop, the profile photo appears overlaid on the banner, to the left of the screen. On mobile, the photo is overlaid in the middle. This means that only the right-hand side of the banner is safe from being obscured by the photo, so any important visuals or text should go there.

It would be better for the profile photo to appear in the same place on desktop and mobile.

There is still one view where the profile photo is centred, but it's good enough overall.

FIXED: Reorder media items

Media items appear beneath the About section of your profile. They're shown in order of when you uploaded them. We should be able to reorder them to focus on the most important items.

LinkedIn have fixed this by introducing a much better Featured section that has scope for more types of content and reordering of that content.

Reordering of the Featured section items sorts this out nicely.

FIXED: Cover images for media items

The preview thumbnails for media items are small and grainy even if the source documents contain crisp, clear images. We need a thumbnail image uploader so we can define how these resources look.

This isn't really fixed but the process is better than before. Good enough.

FIXED: Native video media items

Media items support video links from sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, but it would be better to be able to upload a native video (with SRT captions).

Again, a thumbnail image option would help rather than making us rely on setting a good first frame for the video.

Not really fixed but the presentation of video in the new Featured section is as good as it's likely to get, so I'm happy to take this off the list and say "good enough".

FIXED: Native video thumbnails on personal profiles

(Suggested by Meryl Evans)

As with media items, native videos that we post to the feed should allow us to specify a thumbnail cover image.

Now we can upload a thumbnail (in the same place as uploading an SRT captions file).

FIXED: Change “Remove” link to “Refollow” on the Unfollowed list

In the list of people you've unfollowed, each person has a "Remove" button next to their name. This would be better relabelled as "Refollow".

People might assume that "Remove" means getting rid of the connection altogether. In fact, it means "remove this person from the unfollow list". In other words, "start following them again". Confusing!

There ought to be a "Refollow" option on each person's profile, to avoid needing to scan the unfollow list and use the "Remove" option.

The links are now labelled as "Refollow".

FIXED: Clicking the comments link in an embedded post leads to an authentication prompt from LinkedIn

If you embed a LinkedIn post on your website or blog, clicking the comments link in that embedded post takes you to a LinkedIn authentication page, as though you weren't already signed in.

The link should instead take you straight to the post and its comments (unless you genuinely aren't signed in already).

FIXED: Batch delete/archive direct messages

(Suggested by Victoria Doxat)

Direct message conversation threads can be deleted or archived individually. A set of tick boxes to delete/archive some or all of the threads in one go would be helpful.

Those tick boxes are now in place.

FIXED: Delete individual messages inside direct message threads

(Suggested by Nidhi Prabhu)

It's possible to delete an entire direct message conversation thread via the ellipsis (…) menu in the thread, but there's no option to remove an individual message within a thread. This could be useful if someone has shared something by accident and wants to remove it.

You can now delete or edit direct messages sent within the last 60 minutes.

FIXED: Pinned posts, as per company pages

(Suggested by Ginny Lemarie)

It would be helpful to pin or feature one of your posts at the top of your personal post feed. This is already possible on company pages but not on personal profiles.

This would be similar to the "pinned tweet" feature on Twitter.

This is part of the Featured section.

FIXED: Delete comments on articles

If you write a LinkedIn post, you can delete offensive or inappropriate comments via the ellipsis (…) menu next to each such comment.

If you write a LinkedIn article, you can't delete offensive or inappropriate comments. The menu option just isn't there. We need this feature to stop abuse taking place in article comments. Yes, you can report or block the commenter, but that's not the same as simply being able to remove a comment.

*** END OF NOW FIXED SECTION ***

LinkedIn trainer Mark Williams pointed me to LinkedIn's own open issues list, so there's more for you to check out there.

What other things would you like to see fixed or improved on LinkedIn? Leave a comment and let's see where this goes.

PS. I write B2B website content for a living, but I'm always up for a chat about LinkedIn. Drop me a line here or join my Espresso ?? email list if you fancy keeping in touch.

May Rivera

Medical Records Assistant at NMC Specialty Hospital

1 年

Does it show the exact date in the inbox, including the year??

回复
Chad Ruch

Founder at IB Group Dynamics LLC, ASHRAE Detroit Chapter Member, Tridium Niagara Vykon Systems Integrator, Totem Trusted Partner and Authorized Reseller

3 年

+1 Vote for Date and Time on LinkedIn Posts Instead of display relative dates on LinkedIn posts – e.g. "18h", "3d" – it would be best to show the exact date and time when a post was made.

Thanks for sharing a nice post, If you want to use LinkedIn Messenger in your Gmail without leaving the Gmail. Then you can try our free <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/linkedin-messenger-for-gm/fcghccdfmfhangfpiplpfkjkahpilnpl">Chrome Extension</a>

回复
Susan MacConnell

PRE & POST ENGAGEMENT BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT FOR SPEAKERS, COACHES, & TRAINERS

3 年

Such a great list I am not sure what my favorite is. Bulk delete of notifications may be it. Maybe if they address them one at a time. I would love a way to tag my connections in groups to stay in touch with the connections that most important to me. Thanks John Espirian

Dan Norenberg

Executive and strategic leadership team advisor, coach and author of “Executive Ownershift, Creating Highly Effective Leadership Teams”.

3 年

As of today, when I tried to highlight someone in the comment section of my post, with John Espirian, it does not highlight, but it does on my phone. I just noticed that highlighting John above worked, as of today a line gray line appears after the @ and it isn't highlighting, any thoughts or remedies? THANK YOU, very helpful post!

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