LinkedIn updates ‘collaborative articles’ feature, making online discussions more prominent

If you’ve used LinkedIn recently, you might have noticed a series of new posts coming up on your feed or notifications, named “collaborative articles”.

These articles are described as “knowledge topics”, which start off with AI-powered conversation starters developed by LinkedIn’s editorial team, allowing members of the social media platform’s community to provide insights and perspectives on different areas.

However, contrary to what you may think, this feature is not that new…

It was launched back in March, with over one million expert contributions being posted since. The platform’s Director of Product Management Lakshman Somasundaram on Thursday revealed that collaborative articles have now become the “fastest growing traffic driver” on LinkedIn, with 74 per cent growth in the last month alone in articles being read by members.

LinkedIn has recently updated the feature, in a bid to make it “even easier and more rewarding” for experts to share their knowledge to the world.

What changes has LinkedIn made to collaborative articles?

Collaborative articles will now display a new web layout that aims to put the emphasis on users, as “the real gold” in a collaborative article are the “been there, done that” stories. The new layout puts greater focus on the contributions rather than on the AI-powered text.

Additionally, members can now react to a contribution using the full set of reactions available on the main portal, with these being: like, celebrate, support, love, insightful, and funny.

The revamped collaborative articles also have a new “top contributors” section, putting individuals who have been identified as noteworthy contributors by readers at the top of the article.

The new layout will also enable readers to have a better browsing experience, leading to more people seeing the contributions. “Our new design allows members to easily explore multiple contributions, and new cross-article hyperlinking allows members to easily jump from one article to the next,” Mr Somasundaram said.

Furthermore, LinkedIn’s team has also implemented changes to improve the quality of the AI-powered article text and titles, and has also made it possible to pick and choose which skills users want to contribute to. Collaborative articles will now also be recommended to users who have written about similar topics.

Why are collaborative articles popping up so much more?

One notable change that the platform’s team has done over the past few days is increase the reach of such collaborative articles.

Contributions will now show up not only for people one is connected with, but also for people outside one’s network who can learn from the discussion.

This is also the case for searches, as whenever members search for specific problems or topics on LinkedIn, relevant articles that contain the contributions will now be brought up, Mr Somasundaram added.

In addition to this, whenever a user contributes, LinkedIn will notify members who would benefit from their perspectives, thus allowing their expertise to immediately reach “the people who will get the most value from it”.

That’s not all though, as noteworthy contributors in certain skills will also gain a badge which shows up next to their profile and contributions. This will remain active for members who continue to meet LinkedIn’s “selective criteria and provide noteworthy contributions within a specific skill”.

Ever since it was launched in 2003, LinkedIn has served as a platform for various business leaders to network, develop their careers, find jobs and talent, as well as express their own thoughts and expertise. Collaborative articles seem to be the next step in doing just that.