LinkedIn: What Needs to Change

One of the biggest complaints about the biggest social network on the planet is that it changes a little too often, and a little too much for the liking of users and marketers.

One of the biggest complaints about LinkedIn on the other hand, is that that the platform changes far too little. Striking a balance has always been a problem for individuals, and it looks like social networks suffer from very similar problems.

As the active user-base on LinkedIn continues to grow quarter-on-quarter, the nature in which LinkedIn is used is evolving as well. Members are looking to LinkedIn to spark conversations in their newsfeed - not just in LinkedIn Groups, they're looking to expand their connection base, consuming content that is relevant to their industry, staying on top of what their connections and peers are talking about - and so much more.

A lot of the conversation around LinkedIn centres on networking, conversations and information. I think those are the three pillars that LinkedIn needs to continually build on, and keep at the core of their expansion and transformation plans.

LinkedIn's Continually Growing Membership Base

I use LinkedIn extremely regularly, sharing content, taking part in conversations and replying to messages I receive from my peers on an almost-daily basis. Through this continual usage over the last few years, here are some much-needed tweaks/additions that I feel would greatly benefit LinkedIn.

1. Nested Conversations

One of the key reasons Facebook is ripe for conversations and exchange is due to the way interactions take place on the platform. Conversations and replies are easy to follow, you can reply to a specific comment and have a conversation with a particular person - and it's far easier to follow a chain of thought and line of thinking in a nested conversation format.

Take for example, this exchange that took place a little less than a month ago on one of my updates.

This isn't incredibly hard to follow, given that there are four people taking part in the conversation and it's following the same line of thought, but in the event that someone needs to have a "side-bar" conversation, or talk about something specific that Cindy, Maneesh or Habibullah are talking about - it confuses the entire discussion.

A long chain of continuous messages is very hard to read through, which is why in my opinion, a nested conversation approach on LinkedIn would work greatly in favour of both the users, and the platform - as it would promote conversation.

2. Neater Link Previews

Visuals are everything on social. It's what hooks you, makes you click, gets you interested and eventually - just works better.

At present, if you share a link on LinkedIn, you see a small image preview with a text snippet on the right - something like this:

I'm sure it's a great piece of content because it's from the folks at eConsultancy, but there are plenty of problems with this link preview:

• The image is far too small, I can't see what's going on.
• Text is taking up most of the space in this update, it's a combination of what Felicia has put up, in addition to what's been pulled from the website. It's not neat at all.
• Other updates in my feed that feature quotes and other much larger images are far more distracting, even though I'd like the links to be!

It's a similar problem that Facebook had earlier, in which their links showed up in the same way before they started throwing in much larger images associated with links. Perhaps it's just a cycle that networks have to go through.

3. A More Evolved Newsfeed Algorithm

At present when I scroll through my newsfeed, I struggle to see a pattern. I don't see content similar to the content I've interacted with, I don't see content shared by people that I interact with more often, I don't see content from websites that I usually share content from.

It seems to be a mash of content, clearly unordered - and I can't seem to make much sense of it. I refreshed my feed and here's the very first story in my feed:

I'm sure Shivangi is a lovely person, but I haven't interacted with her content ever before. I've never even heard of Simon Howlett, but I'm sure he's a great guy.

An "IT Service Co-Ordinator" position in London is the farthest thing from what I'd ever consider doing. So why is this the very first thing I see on my newsfeed? It's very possible that people log on to LinkedIn, take one look at their feed and see how irrelevant the first five stories are for them and don't engage.

Something critical for LinkedIn to address.

4. Smarter Networking Recommendations

At present, LinkedIn's recommendation engine works fairly well. After I've added someone to my list of connections or accepted an invitation from someone, I'm often shown a list of "similar" people - falling from the same industry or the same company. It's useful - and I like it.

In my newsfeed however, there's room for improvement. Take for example, this update I shared a few weeks ago (one of the few links I shared).

What if, after sharing this update, LinkedIn showed me:

• People within my network that have shared this link, and linked me to their update (ordered by the amount of conversation that has taken place on the update)
• People within my network that share links from TechCrunch's Social section the most often
• People from my extended network that have shared the same link, and again - ordered by the amount of interaction on the updates

That way - I know for sure which people within my network have interests very similar to mine and are thinking, or talking about the same thing in the industry that I'm currently mulling over.

There are plenty of other considerations for LinkedIn to make, I tried to focus slightly more on the newsfeed, and on what I feel are the three keys to LinkedIn: networking, conversations and information.

What changes would you like to see LinkedIn make?