Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
LinkedIn, the 20-year-old job networking site known for professional, often cringy, self-promotion, is cool now, according to Bloomberg.
Why it matters: If you need a sign that the social media age is well past its prime, here it is.
What's happening: There's nowhere else to run. With Twitter, now X, becoming increasingly unstable under Elon Musk's stewardship — people are looking for somewhere else to post. BlueSky and Mastodon haven't quite caught on. It's a safe bet that most people you know are on LinkedIn.
- Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram — in pursuit of TikTok's market share — are more focused on short-form video.
- LinkedIn users are increasingly sharing baby pics, wedding photos, and other kinds of posts you wouldn't have necessarily found there years ago, a Wired piece pointed out in December.
- Bloomberg's Sarah Frier reports that LinkedIn users shared 41% more content on the network this spring than they did in the same period in 2021.
The big picture: The other thing that's happening is remote work; it's blurred the lines between your work life and professional life. Plus, without a crew at the office to chat with — folks are doing it online.
- People became more comfortable posting about their personal lives during the pandemic, LinkedIn editor-in-chief Dan Roth tells Frier.
On the other hand: "I cannot think of a more inauthentic place for [social connection] than the platform where everyone posts their resume," writes Kate Lindsay in her Substack Embedded.
- Social media is supposed to be "candid and messy," she writes, but LinkedIn is about being professional and "brand-safe."
💭 Our thought bubble: After more than a decade of wild behavior across multiple social networks, maybe a little buttoned-up sharing is OK. Is that cool though? You know the answer.