LinkedIn has been dropping hints about its upcoming ‘Funny’ react and now it’s finally here, with some users seeing the new alert in the app. Yep, you heard it right, you can select a new ‘Funny’ reaction on LinkedIn posts, on top of six other reaction options that are already available. To be clear, the Funny react is gradually being rolled out and isn’t available to everyone yet.

HAHA

While it may not be fully here yet, the Funny react will indeed come, giving users a simple way to express that a LinkedIn post has ‘made them laugh, felt humorous, or offered light-hearted fun in a professional context.’. In short, it adds an appropriate reaction to posts that elicit these related emotions.

Professional context is the key parameter that LinkedIn wants to emphasize here because of the number of untargeted junk that, unfortunately, circulates on the platform, posted by those either seeking attention or trying to leverage off of growth hacks. However, even a small sliver of contextual stuff can end up being pretty bad. Take a look at this montage from @SamBahreini. 

As this happens on all social platforms, big trending posts on LinkedIn are likely to get repeated and re-posted by others in a bid to maximize engagement, which some growth hackers would see as a stroke of genius, but are merely jokes repeated a billion times for regular users. That wouldn’t really be the best experience now, would it? Still, the good news for LinkedIn is that this apparent increase in junk posts is a side effect of more engagement, with people seeking out more hacks and tricks like these because of the benefits they can bring for posting on LinkedIn.

True enough, the platform has seen record levels of engagement over the past two years, and with the current economic situation in a state of flux, you can bet that more people will be using LinkedIn in the coming year as they change roles and seek out new opportunities. Despite this anticipated blow-up, it’s still not entirely sure that the new Funny react will be all that beneficial, at least not in the sense that it’ll likely incentivize more off-topic posts to get more responses.

For context, the funny reaction has been a highly requested feature. Back in February, LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen said that:

“One of the top requests we got was for a laughing emoji reaction. We hear you loud & clear and we agree. Humor is indeed a serious business.” 

The Wrap

Whether the new reaction is good or not doesn’t seem to be relevant since people want and have asked for it, which makes it easier for LinkedIn since it’d be giving the people what they want, equating to brownie points for the platform at the end of the day. Don’t worry if you’re yet to see it, you will soon. In the meantime, you can read more about LinkedIn’s Funny react here.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/3N6Z0FX