For the past two years, social sites like Facebook and Snapchat and Twitter have been pushing aggressively to get their respective user bases to create and watch as much video content as possible. LinkedIn has not.
LinkedIn finally built a video feature, but only for its influential users
LinkedIn is late to the party.
But that may soon change. On Tuesday, the professional network — now owned by Microsoft — launched a new app so that its hand-selected group of Influencers can create and share short videos directly to the app’s news feed. It’s the first time LinkedIn has ever let users upload video directly to the service, something that’s been standard on other social sites for years.
This isn’t a full-blown video push, though. If you are not one of the company’s Influencers, you won’t be able to use the new app. (Don’t worry, you’re in the majority; LinkedIn has just over 500 Influencers out of 433 million registered users.)
LinkedIn videos are also limited to just 30 seconds, and autoplay on desktop but not in LinkedIn’s mobile app. And unlike Facebook, LinkedIn will not use its algorithm to boost videos higher into people’s feeds than other kinds of posts.
Which means all of this is just a baby step into video, although the company eventually plans to move the feature inside its core app and open it to other users, a spokesperson said. It’s still unclear what kind of video people will feel comfortable sharing to their professional profile, and whether or not anyone will want to watch whatever that is.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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