LinkedIn became cool by being stable

The Future. In today’s unpredictable social media landscape, LinkedIn has become a model of success by simply staying the course. Amazingly, the platform is more popular than it’s ever been, fueled by young users migrating their social media know-how to networking for employment. But LinkedIn’s transformation into a place where users want to hang out may be a microcosm of how American culture has become comfortable mixing the personal with the professional — laying the foundation for a hopefully more civil online discourse.

Polished platform
After 20 years, LinkedIn has found itself to be the cool kid on the home screen.

• Users shared 41% more content on the site this spring than the same time in 2021, partly due to new tools for creating newsletters, podcasts, videos, and audio chat rooms.
• Its focus on “knowledge-based content” has made it a hub for finding news from legit sources — just as Facebook and X try to de-platform news.
• Its business model of selling professional subscriptions rewards consistency, with the uptick in popularity surging revenue to a five-year high of $15 billion.

But on a deeper level, millennials’ and Gen Zers’ gravitation to the social network could be because instability in the job market has led to users opting to craft professional profiles that exist beyond any one particular job, especially if they plan to one day switch industries. It’s all about those skills, connections, and references.

And with the rise of LinkedInfluencers (some very famous ones), we may all be incentivized to even try our hand at “broetry.”