LinkedIn's Social Pivot

How the ~1B user professional network went from a cringe-inducing activity feed to a useful and less cringey social feed.

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Today, we are talking about how LinkedIn created a decent social feed.

Also this week:

• iPhone 16 Launch

• OnlyFans wild $6B+ business

• …and them fire posts (including Patrick Mahomes)

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For a most of the 21st century, the absolute cringest place on planet earth was the LinkedIn activity feed.

I’ve made an estimated 7,867 “LinkedIn is so cringe” memes but need to admit that the professional network’s feed has dropped some fire in recent years. Two of the most viral corporate diss tracks of 2024 — Howard Schultz on Starbucks and Massimo Giunco on Nike — took place on the platform.

LinkedIn also birthed an entire genre of memes in which users take the most important real-life milestone (eg. getting engaged) and derive some “B2B SaaS Sales” lessons, culminating in this epic Olympics-themed post.

My previous perception of LinkedIn as a 100% cringefest was very accurate, though. LinkedIn’s own product team long knew that its feed was full of promotional slop and eventually did something about it.

Enter Tomer Cohen — the company’s Chief Product Officer (CPO) — who spearheaded the effort to turn LinkedIn’s main feed into more of a social network with people posting useful content. On a recent episode of Lenny Rachitsky’s indispensable podcast, Cohen shared a number of insights on how the feed has changed from an activity feed to a more social feed:

• LinkedIn was early to a feed but had no gameplan: The professional social network was founded in 2002 — two years before Facebook — and had a feed from the beginning but its early usage was mostly self-promotional. (Cohen: “We actually were the first company to have a social feed. But I think we started wrong. We started to be basically [an] activity feed. So it was like…who changed the job [or] who connected to who. It was more of a ‘tracking your network’ feed. [We just let that be and it naturally] moved into more of a promotional type of feed.”)

• -1 to 1 Products: LinkedIn’s cringey nature was path-dependent from its initial existence as mostly a promotional tool flooded with braggadacious career updates. Sometime in the late 2010s, Cohen asked to put together a unified team to fix the activity feed, which didn’t even have a product manager. The feed had potential because of LinkedIn’s sizeable user base and professional focus but the promotional-heavy aspect of the feed content was a drag on the platform. (Cohen: “There's so much conversation about 0 to 1 products or scaling products. But you don't have much conversations about -1 to 1 products. Or turnaround products [like LinkedIn’s activity feed].”

• Re-orient the feed to provide value: As the feed’s first PM, the main thing that Cohen did was to create an actual North Star for the product. Instead of being a feature used for self-promotion and driving traffic to users' websites, the feed became a place for “knowledge exchange” and getting users to see content that they cared “about professionally” in a relatively safe environment. (Cohen: “[The updated feed was about helping people] get the right views to the right experts in a way that actually helps them build the reputation and build their business…We don’t compete for volume…we’re not in the same kind of category as Meta in terms of scale. But we will compete all day long for the right people seeing your content.”)

• Test changes to the feed with a small randomized cohort: Cohen’s team started tweaking the product but found that it was affecting other LinkedIn teams that relied on traffic, data and learnings from the activity feed. So, Cohen created out a randomized cohort of 2 million users — which is <1% of LinkedIn’s user base — and showed this group new iterations of the feed experience. The most effective updates were rolled out to the rest of the network. (Cohen: “Over the course of months, we [saw] dramatic behaviour change for [the 2m user cohort] … [It was] almost like we carved out a different product and we showed that this could work and then we brought it out to the main experience for everybody else.”)

Now, I will always prefer X/Twitter over LinkedIn. It’s just a different game and more raw experience. X/Twitter — for good and ill — covers the range of human emotion from angry conversations to gut-bustlingly funny jokes whereas LinkedIn will always have to keep a sheen of professionalism. Also, the real-time nature of X/Twitter is still unmatched for information and news gathering. For all the X/Twitter users loudly announcing that they were leaving post-Elon, the platform remains the best digital arena for people at the top of their professions in nearly every industry to share and debate ideas.

However, every social network serves a different purpose and LinkedIn deserves credit for carving out a niche for professional conversations that a lot of people clearly want to have.

Back in Fall of 2022, I wrote about LinkedIn’s potential as a social network for Bloomberg. I saw that there was an opportunity for people that wanted to post funnier content and it ended up being my most popular piece for the publication.

I’ve republished it below for your enjoyment (note: the stats are from September 2022).

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LinkedIn’s Future Is a Joke

The professional network has more than 850 million users but a dearth of non-cringey content — a huge content arbitrage opportunity versus other social platforms. 

I recently saw one of the most absurd LinkedIn posts — and odds are good that you may have, too.

Alex Cohen — a [former] product manager for Carbon Health — relayed the story of how he saved money for his startup while on a business trip. Instead of ordering room service, Cohen says, he bought some raw chicken breast and cooked it using the hotel room’s coffee brewing pot. He posted this image, saying, “It’s the little things that get you promoted.”

Cohen later admitted it was all a joke (or in technical parlance, a “shitpost”). But so many people believed the tale to be true that it went viral on Linkedin, then Reddit and Twitter. The post ultimately garnered thousands of replies and millions of impressions. 

“The beautiful part about LinkedIn is that because it's professional, everyone expects posts to be professional and they take it all at face value,” Cohen tells me over the phone. “You can really push satire and while my coffee pot chicken was a joke, I’ve seen wilder stories on the platform turn out to be true — like the ‘crying CEO’.”

In a digital world where attention is the scarcest resource, the coffee pot chicken story is the perfect example of how a skilled practitioner can use humor to pull eyeballs on LinkedIn (and beyond).

The opportunity is also quite large because LinkedIn has 850 million users. The Microsoft-owned site doesn’t break out daily active users, but even a minority of that user base is comparable to traditional social networks like Snap (347 million) or Twitter (238 million).

Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s ad business has surpassed $5 billion a year, which is on par with Twitter ($5.1 billion) and more than Snap ($4.1 billion) or Pinterest ($2.6 billion).

Despite the impressive numbers, LinkedIn is probably not top of mind when you think of social content. Or if you do, it’s for cringe-inducing humblebrags, self-congratulatory missives and ridiculous inspirational stories (which may or may not involve a coffee pot chicken).

In fact, LinkedIn’s cringe reputation has lead to a number of large social media accounts solely dedicated to documenting the cringe: LinkedIn Flex (65k Twitter followers); r/LinkedInLunatics (153k Reddit users); and The State of LinkedIn (205k Twitter followers).

Why does such content thrive on the platform? 

Well, we have to remember who pays the bills for Linkedin. The biggest revenue line is Talent Solutions, which brings in more than $6 billion a year selling recruiting tools.

Translation: recruiters and human resource (HR) departments are the main customers. 

As Fadeke Adegbuyi explains in an Every article title “LinkedIn’s Alternate Universe”:

“Every platform has its royalty. On Instagram it's influencers, foodies, and photographers. Twitter belongs to the founders, journalists, celebrities, and comedians. On LinkedIn, it’s hiring managers, recruiters, and business owners who hold power on the platform and have the ear of the people. The depravity of a platform where HR Managers are the rockstars speaks for itself.”

With this context, humblebrags and exaggerated inspirational tales make all the sense in the world. The proliferation of such content may also be due to Linkedin’s newsfeed algorithm, which — according to the company’s engineering blog — was updated in 2018 to optimize the following metrics: 

• Engagement with your network: LinkedIn re-weighted the value of a like or share. If I post something and my mom (who is in my network) likes it, her single like or reply is more valuable to me than the engagement from someone outside my network, even if that other person is an influencer with a large following. Therefore, a humblebrag for a recent accomplishment will likely get rewarded as people I know “congratulate” me (thanks, mom).

• Dwell time: Time spent on a post is a stronger signal than only a like. This metric incentivizes people to turn mundane professional activities into a hero’s journey narrative with some random lesson at the end. 

Add it all up and Linkedin clearly has a supply-demand mismatch: a large and valuable user base (demand) combined with a lack of non-cringe content (supply). 

One person who’s taken advantage of the mismatch is Chris Bakke, the founder and CEO of Laskie, a job-matching platform for the tech industry [note: the startup was acquired by X in 2023 and became X Hiring]. 

Bakke posts daily business-themed jokes on LinkedIn, which has been good for Laskie’s bottom line (full disclosure: I’ve laughed at and liked many of Bakke’s satirical posts).

“Social content is a significant driver of customer leads,” Bakke wrote to me in an email. “Several million dollars of new business has come to us from Twitter and LinkedIn over the last year.”

Within the past few weeks, Bakke has had a number of viral hits including a post with 155k likes and another with 56k likes.

“There is a massive content arbitrage opportunity on LinkedIn versus other platforms,” says Bakke. “After you've scrolled through your LinkedIn feed and seen 7 promotions of people you don't quite know, 19 rehashed arguments about in-person vs. remote work, and 30 job postings that aren't a good fit for you, it's nice to have a laugh.”

Daniel Murray — who has 500k+ total LinkedIn followers on his personal and business pages (The Marketing Millennial) — believes anyone in a sales or marketing role should be using humor on LinkedIn, particularly with the platform’s content push in recent years including: 

• Creator Mode: A new profile setting that changes the default on your profile from “connect” to “follow” and allows access to more tools and analytics. 

• Different mediums: Linkedin has rolled out publishing tools for long-form blogging and newsletters offerings.

• Linkedin News: Rebranded from Linkedin Editorial, the professional network employs ~200 journalists around the world to create and curate content (including from Linkedin users)

“People want entertainment, even on professional networking sites,” says Murray. “I like posting memes, which are the language of the internet. They are great for generating  top-of-funnel engagement that you can convert into other business goals.”

So, if you’ve got a funny coffee pot story, you know where to post it.

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Links and Memes

iPhone 16: On Monday, Apple released the latest version of the iPhone and here is my pithy summary of the launch event.

For the past 5 years, the main selling proposition for each new iPhone has been an improved camera and processing power with Apple's custom silicon chip. These are notable upgrades but less revolutionary with each new phone. Fair enough. The smartphone form factor has been optimized to near perfection and the iPhone is the greatest consumer product ever with 2B+ devices sold and over $1T in revenue.

This reality is reflected in the pace of new phone purchases: the average user has gone from upgrading every 2-3 years to every 3-4 years. Apple’s version of AI (Apple Intelligence) is the company’s great hope for kicking off a huge device upgrade cycle because AI-powered features require powerful hardware. To wit, the iPhone 16 has a new A18 chip, which is 30% faster than the previous version and will help drive the improved Siri along with a bunch of other generative AI features.

I’m still on an iPhone 11 and will wait until all the AI issues are ironed out until buying a new one. So, maybe I’ll get the iPhone 17. Either way, Apple will sell 150m+ of these iPhone 16s. The entry price of $799 is unchanged from last year, which means the device is cheaper on an inflation-adjusted basis. This “price cut” is all part of Apple’s strategy to expand its installed user base and profit more from selling accessories (eg. Watch and 5x pairs of AirPods to every user because they’re so easy to lose) and services (App Store fees and 1TB of storage because my son likes to take 1000x images of the same Lego vehicle).

This change in focus means that profits from services — which have higher margins — will soon pass profits from selling the physical phone hardware.

For the full iPhone 16 analysis, check out Ben Thompson’s “Boomer Apple” article. Also, The Verge has a great summary with the iPhone 16 presentation in 16 minutes including details on the new Apple Intelligence-powered Siri, a faster-charging Apple Watch Ultra model (with health features such as sleep apnea monitoring) and AirPod Pro 2 (which have “clinical” hearing aid features).

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OnlyFans is a massive business: The UK-based creator platform primarily sells adult content via monthly subscriptions and one-off transactions (videos, notes, photos) with 4 million “creators” and 300 million subscribers.

Investor Matthew Ball says that based on its “profits, scale, defensibility, reach, and impact…it is probably the most successful UK company founded since DeepMind in 2010, and the most significant media platform founded since TikTok (via Musical.ly in 2014), and dedicated creator economy platform… ever.”

He breaks down the numbers to explain why:

• In 2023, OnlyFans generated $6.3 billion in gross revenues, up from $300 million five years earlier

• In 2023 OnlyFans creators received a stunning $5.3B in payouts (more than total NBA salaries of $4.9B for 2023-24 season)

• In 2023, the platform had net revenues of $1.3 billion and operating profit was $649 million (over the past 5 years, total operating profit totalled $1.74 billion)

• OnlyFans generated $31m in net revenue and $16m operating profit per employee (42 full time) in 2023...it had 61 employees in 2021

• “OnlyFans has paid its two owners $1.1 billion in dividends since 2019, with $472 million paid in 2023 alone. Remarkably, Leonid Radvinsky, who had previously founded a pornographic livestream company, bought 75% of OnlyFans in 2018, at which point profits had (likely) not yet passed $1 million on a cumulative basis.”

There are obviously moral questions around this type of business. But if the company went away, another one would quickly take its place. Porn and adult content is the dark matter of the internet — ~25% of all traffic and searches — and the industry has catalyzed digital innovations such as internet forums, online payments, double opt-in emails, video files and streaming.

OnlyFans could also be a winner of the major technological wave: generative AI. Why? Because the videos are getting so lifelike and customizable that there may soon be millions of “digital adult creators” pulling in massive revenue.

In a semi-related note, someone convinced me to buy the OnlyPhans.co URL a few years ago (I couldn't afford the more expensive .com). I did and wanted to make a platform for photos of pho broth but got distracted and gave up after 3 days. In hindsight, a huge missed opportunity.

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Some other baller links:

• “Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show Is the Final Nail in Drake’s Coffin”: Kendrick Lamar will perform the 2025 half-time Super Bowl show in New Orleans. Some people are mad at Jay-Z and Roc Nation — who work with the NFL to pick the artist — for not tapping L’il Wayne or any other New Orleans rapper. Famously, Drake was part of Wayne’s label Young Money and the whole incident is just another W for Kendrick. My long-shot prediction: Kendrick and Drake squash the beef and show up on stage with L’il Wayne. (The Ringer)

• “OpenAI releases o1, its first model with ‘reasoning’ abilities”: The AI startup — which is in talks to raise $6.5B at a $150B valuation — just dropped a new feature that can answer “complex queries” including math and coding questions. It does so by answering and reasoning in steps, while providing an explanation of the thought process. (The Verge)

• **Bearly AI Update**: The AI-powered research app I’m building has added OpenAI’s o1 model and you can try it for free — along with other leading generative AI tools from Google, Anthropic and Meta — using the code BEARLY1 by visiting the website.

• “Medellin, Revisited”: Interesting podcast on how the Colombian city went from murder capital of the world in the 1990s to a tourist destination (and, now, how the digital nomad movement is really annoying locals). (99% Invisible)

• “How 9/11 Became One of the Internet’s Most Popular Memes”: A look at how 9/11turned into absurd and meme-y content for the younger internet generation. (Rolling Stone)

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…and them fire posts:

Finally, we don’t do much politics here but the US Presidential debate took place earlier in the week. And former President Donald Trump replied to a question from Vice President Kamala Harris about healthcare by saying he had “the concept of a plan”…which lead to these posts: