LinkedIn Looks to Make ‘Repost' a Default Post Engagement Option
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Loading... - Fernanda Barbosa
- 19 Jul 2022
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This is… well, I don’t know.
Last month, LinkedIn launched the first iteration of its new ‘Repost’ option on feed updates, which provides a simple way to help amplify a post to your LinkedIn audience.
That could be great for alerting your network to new job opportunities, industry-specific trend reports, great creators to follow, etc.
But as we noted at the time, it could also be problematic, in that it will additionally enable quick amplification of criticisms and negative comments.
And this will probably make it worse:
As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Nima Owji (and shared by Matt Navarra), LinkedIn is now looking to take its Repost option a step further, by making it the default option, with its own icon along the lower function bar on each post.
In some ways that makes sense. Right now, your post engagement options are ‘Like’, ‘Comment’, ‘Share’ and ‘Send’, with the latter providing the option to share the post via LinkedIn message. The ‘Share’ option prompts you to either repost the update, or ‘Share with your thoughts’, i.e. create a post with this update attached.
Updating that to ‘Repost;’ then is not a big change, and it could make it easier to amplify content in the app, and to ask your followers to amplify your posts by re-sharing to maximize reach.
The change here likely suggests that more people are simply reposting content anyway, which is why LinkedIn is looking to make it the default. But still, I do have some hesitations based on past implementations of the same.
Back in 2019, the man who invented the ‘retweet’ option on Twitter, Chris Wetherell, said that he regretted the feature in retrospect, after seeing how it could be used to amplify criticisms and negative opinions. Read More...
