Results From LinkedIn's Experiments On You; LinkedIn Adds Templates and "Commitments"; The Latest in the Instagram vs TikTok Contest

This week...

• LinkedIn makes an interesting move to add a Commitments feature to business pages.
• LinkedIn's social experiment on you shows....
• Samsung's truly multi-channel activation (metaverse and Discord included)
• Instagram takes another step in their video-first evolution
• TikTok increases text length and introduces the ??feature

And before I jump in, my thoughts go to all those who are going through hard times, from hurricanes to war, earthquakes, and civil unrest; times are hard for many. I'm sending you my best wishes. And I'll do what I can to offer practical support through trusted organizations that can reach those in need. Please let me know in the comments which are your trusted organizations.

Let's dive in:

LinkedIn Introduces Post Templates, With Clickable Links, Pinned Comments and Pinned Commitments

While still rolling this out for desktop, the Post Templates are available on the mobile app. They allow you to choose a background, enter text, and insert a link, and stickers. Think Instagram or Facebook text story templates.?

The pinned comments feature is exactly what you think it is. Some of you may choose to use it to pin a URL in the comments or pin the most interesting comment you get. I recommend going with the latter to increase engagement.?

Page Commitments is a VERY interesting one. It will allow you to showcase your values, certifications, articles, blogs, and videos on your About page NOT the Life tab.? You can “feature up to 5 commitments such as:

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion?
• Career growth and learning?
• Work-life balance?
• Social impact?
• Environmental sustainability “

LinkedIn Ran a Social Experiment On You: Here’s What We Learned From It

Surprise! You’ve been a test subject and didn’t know it. LinkedIn ran experiments on over 20 million users around the world, from 2015 to 2019. But before I share the results, let’s look at LinkedIn’s data history.?

In June of 2006, Johnathan Goldman arrived for work at LinkedIn. He was a new breed of scientists, there to nerd out on the wealth of data LinkedIn was collecting. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s cofounder believed in the power of analytics because of his history at PayPal so he was open to Goldman running some experiments. One of Goldman’s first observations was that users weren’t seeking out connections with the people who were already on the site outside of their direct network. As one LinkedIn manager put it, “It was like arriving at a conference reception and realizing you don’t know anyone. So you just stand in the corner sipping your drink—and you probably leave early.”

They wouldn’t want people leaving the platform early or at all, so Goldman got permission to use ads space to show connection recommendations. One idea he used was “triangle closing”:? if I’m connected to two people, odds are they also know each other. The ads spaces started being filled with new connection recommendations and it worked. The click rates were through the roof and provided a platform for growth.?

That was just the beginning of what we now know as “People You May Know.” Fast forward to 2015 and LinkedIn is still trying to improve matchmaking. And testing “the strength of weak ties” theory.? Are people more likely to gain employment and other opportunities through weak connections vs through close friends? Researchers at LinkedIn, M.I.T., Stanford and Harvard Business School later analyzed aggregate data from the tests in a study published this month in the journal Science.

The conclusion?

“The researchers analyzed how LinkedIn’s algorithmic changes had affected users’ job mobility. They found that relatively weak social ties on LinkedIn proved twice as effective in securing employment as stronger social ties,” according to the New York Times.

“The experiments showed that weak ties increase job transmissions, but only to a point, after which there are diminishing marginal returns to tie weakness. The authors show that the weakest ties had the greatest impact on job mobility, whereas the strongest ties had the least. Together, these results help to resolve the apparent “paradox of weak ties” and provide evidence of the strength of weak ties theory,” according to the Weak Ties, Failed Tries and Successes report.?

Did you catch that bit about “LinkedIn’s algorithmic changes”??

So here are just a couple of the things that bug me about this.

1. There are many layers of algorithms being applied to LinkedIn’s ecosystem, which can in turn affect behavior, and even what a weak or strong connection is.
2. As the NYTimes authors put it,? “Experts who study the societal impacts of computing said conducting long, large-scale experiments on people that could affect their job prospects, in ways that are invisible to them, raised questions about industry transparency and research oversight.”

Did you see the weak ties effect in your life? And how do you feel about being a part of this experiment??

Samsung bridges metaverse and real-life experiences for Climate Week NYC

I hear a lot of people saying they can't comprehend how the metaverse can be used for commerce. Here's a great example of a multi-channel activation program that delivers immersive fun experiences while also building community and making strong statements of environmental responsibility. Fashion, scavenger hunts, and gamified experiences encourage consumers to move through multiple channels and environments, such as Discord, Decentraland (the brand’s metaverse hub, Samsung 837X, is located in Decentraland), social media, e-commerce, and brick-and-mortar stores.

For those of you who want to see the immediate ROI... I bet that's not how they'll be measuring the success of this campaign. Samsung is making a strong statement about who they are, who they are for, and what they stand for. This multi-channel approach is what I would use to collect first-party data and build loyalty. You can find more info here.

https://martech.org/samsung-bridges-metaverse-and-real-life-experiences-for-climate-week-nyc/

Instagram Confirms that Videos Under 60 Seconds in Stories will No Longer Be Split into Segments

Step by step Instagram is working on merging all of its video products into one. This announcement may be part of that. Videos in Stories that are under 60 seconds in length will no longer be split into 15-second segments in the app.

Question: would you watch a story that’s a minute long??

Search Engine Move? TikTok Increases Length Of Video Descriptions

So you’ve heard these statistics that TikTok is being used as a search engine. They probably heard the news too because they just increased the video description character limit to 2,200 characters. Now creators have more opportunities to optimize for search.?(this paragraph is 250 characters).

TikTok Rolls Out Comment Downvotes to All Users

Since Reddit and a few other nice networks, none of the major social networks dared introduce this feature. They've tested it and decided against it. But TikTok keeps on going where no one has gone before. After testing it for six months, TikTok announced that it’s rolling out comment downvotes for all users, as a means to flag inappropriate responses to video clips. What better way to flag inappropriate responses than to publicly shame them with a downvote?

What did you think of this week's news?