Social Media Platforms

Yesterday LinkedIn released a slew of new AI features for customers, anchored by the announcement that the platform will hit 1B users this month. 📈 🥇 These moves play out against the dramatic backdrop of Twitter fumbling its rebrand. Since Musk took over and rebranded the platform to X, DAUs have declined 4% from 255M to 245M and US Ad Revenue has shrunk 60%. Musk paid $44B for the company that is now valued between $15-19B. 🚨 In a world where Twitter is chaotically lurching from one drastic product decision to another without any content moderation and an algorithm that ostensibly fuels a rage machine to drive engagement, even long-time supporters are drifting away. See Benedict Evans' thoughtful piece last week on his decision to leave the platform. LinkedIn is best positioned to benefit from the X disenchantment because it has the most similar user demographic and intent behind use. No one is going to sub out X for TikTok or Instagram, but LinkedIn is another story. ➡ LinkedIn is where your professional network lives. Given the clear organizing principle behind the community, users are more likely to have verified profiles and be clearly identifiable in the real world. This doesn't lend itself to vitriolic hate and anonymous trolling, making the user experience much more pleasant. Sure, LinkedIn has its own issues, but I would choose a humble brag that makes me roll my eyes than threats on Twitter any day. I don’t know if anyone else shares this sentiment, but as a woman, I feel infinitely more comfortable sharing my thoughts on LinkedIn than I ever did on Twitter. ➡ The LinkedIn audience is inherently more monetizable. 53% of US LinkedIn users are high-income earners ($75K+). On average, the LinkedIn user base has 2x the buying power of the avg online audience. It is no wonder that creators are beginning to fill the vacuum left by Twitter by turning here. A follower on Linkedin >> a follower on any other platform. ➡ 40% of people aged 30-49 read news on LinkedIn, which makes it a great starting point for discussions and healthy debate on topics. They are unique in having an editorial function which helps promote and curate a feed of professional conversations. Over the last 3 decades, LinkedIn has quietly been building up unassailable network effects and scale (1B uses, $15B in annual revenue). It has that most elusive of traits for a social media platform - trust and credibility - and for that reason, may well end up as the dark horse in this race. The crown is there for the taking; it is now up to LinkedIn's leadership not to squander the opportunity. What do you think?

Most social platforms have one job. Sell your attention to the highest bidder. That single incentive shapes everything from the algorithm to the ad load. LinkedIn is built differently. I sat down with Mark Lobosco, LinkedIn's Chief Business Officer, to unpack this. 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗜𝘀 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 Mark pointed out something most marketers overlook. LinkedIn runs multiple business units in parallel: • Premium subscriptions • Job seeker subscriptions • A talent business (recruiter) • A sales solutions business • Advertising Advertising is one revenue stream among many. Not the whole business model. That structure has massive implications. Every one of those business units depends on the same thing to function: trust. Recruiters won't pay for LinkedIn if the platform is overrun with quality candidates. Sales teams won't pay if the professional graph loses its signal. Advertisers won't pay if nobody trusts what they're seeing. So LinkedIn has to protect the member experience across every business line. Trust isn't a brand value. It's infrastructure. 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵 𝘃𝘀. 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘁𝗵 This is something I talk about all the time. Mark put it this way: "𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘰𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘥𝘐𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘞𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴." Ultimately, other platforms are chasing the interest graph, optimizing for volume, scale, and eyeballs. Whatever grabs your attention and keeps it. LinkedIn is still built on the social and professional graph. You see more content from the people you've opted in to follow, know, and trust. Those are fundamentally different products. One is engineered for attention. The other is engineered for relationships. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿 LinkedIn has been the most trusted social platform for five years running. That trust shows up in ad performance and 87% of B2B buyers prefer content from trusted industry voices. Trust compounds every dollar you spend. 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘃𝘀. 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 The point of differentiation with LinkedIn is seen in its juxtaposition against other platforms. Connections over clout. Depth over breadth. Quality over quantity. Every other platform is selling the most eyeballs. LinkedIn is selling credibility. It's a premium platform with stronger, narrower, deeper connections amongst members. Something incredibly valuable to advertisers. And, creators are still wildly undervalued on this platform. This still feels like YouTube in 2010. For brands paying attention, the opportunity for creator collaborations is enormous. Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network & follow Brendan Gahan for more. Interested in LinkedIn Influencer Marketing? Reach out to us Creator Authority.

When LinkedIn hires creators like Steven Bartlett to produce shows, traditional media should take note. They're not just hiring a podcaster. They're hiring someone who built a media empire by doing everything traditional news refuses to do. Bartlett doesn't hide behind institutional authority. He shares his failures, his doubts, his process. When he doesn't understand something, he asks. When he's wrong, he admits it. Sound familiar? It should. It's exactly what TikTok creators do to build trust with Gen Z. What I've been telling newsrooms for two years. What audiences have been screaming for since they stopped watching our newscasts. LinkedIn isn't experimenting with news. They're replacing it. Think about what Bartlett brings: ✅ A combined 6 million followers who trust him personally (including almost 3 million on LinkedIn❗️) ✅ Conversations that go viral without clickbait ✅ Long-form content that people actually finish ✅ Zero institutional baggage Now imagine him interviewing CEOs about layoffs. Founders about failures. Leaders about real challenges. Not with a teleprompter. Not with talking points. Not with the sanitized, risk-averse approach that killed traditional media's credibility. With actual curiosity. Real questions. Human conversation. Because here's what traditional media still doesn't understand: The platform wars are over. Platforms won. And now they're coming for the content. LinkedIn doesn't need traditional media's infrastructure. They have the audience. They have the data. They have the distribution. All they needed was someone who understands that trust isn't inherited anymore. It's earned in every conversation. The future of news isn't about choosing between creators and journalists. It's about recognizing that the creators already won. #FutureOfNews #MediaDisruption #LinkedInNews