R.I.P. People Also Viewed. Then again…
Bruce Johnston
Sales and Marketing Consultant. LinkedIn Specialist: LinkedIn Training, LinkedIn Consulting and LinkedIn Coaching
People Also Viewed is (soon to be “was”) a feature on your profile where LinkedIn shows a short list of people similar to you. In LinkedIn’s words, “It was designed to help find relevant members you may consider connecting with.” Despite its name, the People Also Viewed list was not just based on other profiles viewed similar to yours, but also on similar job titles and industries. One nice aspect about it was you could turn it off if you wanted to - and as the list essentially offered your profile visitor other profiles to leave yours and visit, turning it off was a good idea.?
Starting Feb 29th, LinkedIn will replace People Also Viewed with a feature called “Other Similar Profiles”. The interesting thing here is that LinkedIn already has a feature that has been around for a couple years that sounds like this. When you would see someone in search results there would be a clickable link saying “View Similar Profiles” and based on things like length of experience and job titles, LinkedIn would show you “similar” people.?
So in most ways, likely with the exception that LinkedIn’s Artificial Intelligence fetish is being indulged, “Other Similar People” doesn’t seem that different from “People Also Viewed.”??
The really only interesting aspect to this new feature is you can’t turn it off.??
When all this came to light last week - I received an email about it from LinkedIn on Thursday Feb 15 - I thought initially that this was a crappy idea, with LinkedIn foisting more artificial intelligence created features on us, but then I thought back to my own history with People Also Viewed. I used it in my very early LinkedIn days as an adjunct when I did a search. In my early days when I wasn’t very good at searching (“inept” would have been a charitable description), this was a handy tool, but I progressed in my search abilities pretty quickly, and thinking about it now, I haven’t paid attention to a PAV panel in years. It’s noise, like the little ads that appear here and there on LinkedIn.?
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The bottom line is that regardless of its source and how LinkedIn derives the people who appear on it, Other Similar People is just a distraction. Anyone who is really looking for someone - whether they be a? recruiter or someone using LinkedIn for prospect or competitive research - sure doesn’t need this feature to accomplish their job. It’s a feature for newbies, something to keep them wandering around LinkedIn.
While the fact that it can’t be turned off, and the fact that LinkedIn emailed me about this change, when LinkedIn makes changes to features every week without alerting me, makes me a little nervous, based on what we know now, this is a feature change that won’t make any real difference.?
Today’s newsletter is a shorter version of my email newsletter (this week’s email newsletter also includes a quite long and involved piece on the effects of Creator Mode going away). Here’s a link to the sign up page: https://practicalsmm.com/contact/
The obligatory disclaimer: I do not work for or have any association with LinkedIn, other than being a user who pays them for his Sales Navigator subscription every month.?
Founder @ MLT Wellbeing | Workplace wellbeing Burnout Prevention Health and Well Being Programs
4 个月I just noticed this and people similar to me are absolutely not anymore. Something def wrong with this algorithm
I help teams find solutions for process, tools, ideas and questions, impacting their customers. Writing and publishing are also skills I have acquired along the way. "Premium Author".
9 个月Yea, Bruce - your key points are: "While the fact that it can’t be turned off, and the fact that LinkedIn emailed me about this change, when LinkedIn makes changes to features every week without alerting me, makes me a little nervous, based on what we know now, this is a feature change that won’t make any real difference."
Transforming your firm's social media to become a source of real business wins | Founder of Social-Hire.com, a B2B social selling agency | Social media marketing is like a Rubik's Cube. I'll help your business solve it!
9 个月Disappointed that the replacement for "People Also Viewed" is going to be something that we will no longer have the control to determine whether it appears on our profile or not Bruce Johnston. I would have thought that, at least for premium members, the ability to toggle this on and off should have been retained.
Director of Business Development | Legal Marketing ?? | Business Development ?? | Probate Genealogy ?? | Social Media ??
9 个月I think this is a lot of LI noise about very little. Can’t imagine POV will be missed by anybody - perhaps other than recruiters - though not having the ability to turn off the replacement feature may be an issue further down the road.
LinkedIn Profile Doctor. Visibility, legibility & credibility for Founders, CEOs and Entrepreneurs ? Speaker, Profile Writer & LinkedIn Training since 2006.
9 个月I always advised my clients to switch off 'People also viewed' as it provided five more potential jumping off points from your profile, who were all potentially competing with you. Going against my own advice, I've switched the feature back *ON* again yesterday to see what it looks like, who it positions me against, and to see how it might differ from the forthcoming 'Other similar profiles'. It's showing people who are broadly competing with my services, albeit mostly in different timezones, but it's done a relatively good job of ensuring the core services offered are similar. All of which is not good when I want people paying attention to me. I agree that this feature is one that becomes almost invisible because it's on every profile, but it will be interesting to see if it gains any more traction with its new application. Who knows, we may as a result of this change find more visitors drawn to our profile because of our snappy photos and pithy headlines.