As if we didn’t already have enough social network sites that highlight our popularity to us, LinkedIn just joined the club. Facebook constantly reminds us of how popular our friends are, Twitter tells you how many followers others have and Instagram uses photos to show you what you are missing out on. Now your LinkedIn profile will tell you how you rank among your connections in terms of profile views.
Located next to the “Who’s viewed your profile” tab, the “How You Rank” feature privately shows you more interesting statistics about profile viewing. It generates what percentage you rank for profile views, what number ranking you hold, and the percentage change within the past month.
But LinkedIn takes it one step further by suggesting ways to increase your page views. For instance, one suggestion involves updating your summary to show up in more of the right searches. LinkedIn also recommends specific groups to join and new skills to add that can increase your visibility and help you more frequently show up in search results.
The purpose of adding this feature is to engage users and generate interest in the “Who’s viewed your profile” page, which gives you a taste of who’s taken a look at your profile; to see the complete list, you have to upgrade to a premium version of LinkedIn. Users will likely use this feature to draw comparisons between themselves and all the other users out there. This very well could result in people taking LinkedIn’s suggestions for increasing page views, adding more connections and even upgrading their accounts.
Adding the “How you rank” feature may also mark a shift in LinkedIn’s larger strategy. Rather than keeping the site’s focus straightforward, to cleanly build a professional network, LinkedIn has begun to use similar engagement tactics as social network sites like Facebook. Is LinkedIn following the lead of other social networks that capitalize upon a user’s competitive nature, fear of exclusion and general desire to be popular within a given community?
The good news is that only you can see where you rank among your connections, at least for now.
Featured image by A Name Like Shields Can Make You Defensive
via Venture Beat
