As Microsoft tries to make LinkedIn our new Facebook with ridiculous viral posts, it’s failing creators in a significant way. LinkedIn launched a Creator fund of $25 million, but is now focusing mostly on India.
Currently in 2022, LinkedIn is really failing to be Creator First. As someone who has been very active on LinkedIn and won two “Top Voice” awards, it’s really upsetting to me how Microsoft is low-balling creators.
For contrast, Pinterest recently announced a $1.2 million creator fund just for underrepresented communities. Snap and TikTok of course are years ahead with their own Creator Fund initiatives including sharing a percentage from Ad-revenue with creators the way YouTube does. So why is LinkedIn so behind?
As competition heats up for creator talent, Pinterest this week announced it was more than doubling its initial investment in its Creator Fund with an additional $1.2 million in a combination of cash grants, ad credits and other creator resources for underrepresented groups.
Platforms are wooing creators with cash. LinkedIn thinks they need to learn how to be creators first.
LinkedIn has hired kids from TikTok to help “manage creators”. Some of their News editors have switched to the Creator segment. But they have shown no serious commitment to even keep up with basic standards of the Creator Economy of other social networks.
Creators work with coaches who help them increase engagement and reach. Microsoft already failed at cloning Amazon’s Twitch. They spent $millions wooing video game streaming creators, until they realized they could not “buy” creator network influence. Microsoft has already bought GitHub and LinkedIn and have tried to “buy” Discord, there seems to be a major disconnect with how Microsoft operates in the Creator Economy.
LinkedIn has always tried to “pick the winners” in how influencers work on their platform. They have an invite-only tag of influencers where those people are “given” followers at a steady rate per day with the use of recommendations. In this manner they “build” a network of perceived influencer status, which isn’t even by organic reach but by algorithmic editorial decisions by decision makers at the company. It’s not an authentic network where you can trust numbers like followers, reach and the impartially of the algorithms.
Employees from LinkedIn have tried to assure me bias or censorship does not exist on their social platform. I’m not sure those customer relations people even understand how the system actually works.
Today LinkedIn likes to make “feel good” posts go viral in much the same way TikTok utilizes positivity to breed immersion and addiction to their feed. Except Linkedin’s content is 3rd rate, and it’s certainly not very creative or even very informative. LinkedIn has failed up until now to even utilize video or audio content in a good way.
LinkedIn is Not Investing or Rewarding Real Creators
LinkedIn seems to condescend towards creators by picking their “graduates” of their program. Hiring people to “teach” them how to be Creators, of course the kind that Linkedin wants. These programs pick 100 creators (now active in India) and give them special guidance by paid consultants that likely cost a fortune who are creators themselves from video-centric networks. LinkedIn is not even a video-centric platform.
I was shocked to see a smaller platform like Pinterest was throwing serious money for them at the Creator Economy.
Pinterest has announced a new expansion of its Creator Fund program, which is designed to help support Pinterest creators in building a presence on the platform, and monetizing their Pin efforts, in order to keep them posting more often. So this is positive for creators on Pinterest, which is highly likely to be acquired by someone soon. Rumors of them being acquired by PayPal did not seem to pan out.
Pinterest also trains its Creators, but by topic. . Each cycle will focus on a different content area, for more personalized training and community building. This first 2022 cycle is focused on Fashion and Beauty, inviting Fashion and Beauty creators in the US to apply. Future cycles will include topics like Food, Lifestyle and Wellness. Okay so that makes sense.
Last fall, LinkedIn was preparing to launch its accelerator program, an incubator-style initiative that provides creators with a $15,000 grant for weekly posting requirements. Weekly posting? I typically post around three to five times a day on LinkedIn. It’s not as if I have much reach though, in spite of the 200,000 followers I’ve acquired. This is because I don’t post exclusively positive sentiment clickbait to game its post mechanics.
I fail on LinkedIn because I prefer Poll formats and long-form content, not forms of content that go viral on LinkedIn and adjusts to its Ad-revenue molded recommdantion system. LinkedIn specializes in a form of incentives called vanity metrics, which substitutes supposed reach for actually paying Creators monetarily the way YouTube or TikTok would. By giving people more supposed “fame”, LinkedIn thinks it’s doing a good job building app retention and creators. LinkedIn also lets you create a Newsletter to your following, for free with no Stripe or monetization features.
So if Pinterest > Linkedin in the Creator Economy
This suggests Microsoft isn’t actually serious about the Creator Economy. It can afford to acquire one of the biggest gaming companies in Activision, all that IP, but it can’t afford to pay a few thousand dollars to its most active creators on LinkedIn. Microsoft paid $69 Billion for a company plagued with sexual harassment scandals. But it’s too cheap to reward its own creators on LinkedIn.
This is not exactly how to become a winner in the Creator Economy, LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Wants to Manage your Creativity
The accelerator program, which is part of LinkedIn’s larger $25 million investment in creators, started with 100 hand-picked people in the U.S. and is now expanding to India. Andrei Santalo, LinkedIn’s global head of Community and Creators, was hired in May 2021 to spearhead the influencer program; his team has grown to more than 50 creator managers over the past few months.
LinkedIn’s goal is to squeeze ROI out of you if you are among the lucky “hand-picked” people to mould into what it wants you to be online. That certainly sounds inspiring for the future of the Creator Economy. Here, I’ll pay you to do what we want you to be!
There must be some Executives at LinkedIn and Microsoft who really don’t get what the Creator Economy is going to become.
As TikTok, Snap, Pinterest and others continue to mature the Creator Economy, some legacy networks like LinkedIn are only tip-toeing into the space. They realize already a focus on India is likely the best bet. So most Western influencers on LinkedIn have likely already missed the boat.
Let’s Coach you to Help LinkedIn Become like Instagram and TikTok
Santalo said the idea behind the program is to first use coaching to help creators learn about different mediums — video, written posts, audio — and provide the grant money as a cushion. “You can't just build tools for creators and put them out there and hope they use them,” Santalo said. “There's so much competition; there's so many places to create and consume.”
As LinkedIn expands its B2B advertising, it realizes it needs to swallow some of the leftovers of networks like Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok. Or in fact create clone armies of creators that mimic its positive-sentiment algo bias clickbait strategy in posts (the shorter version of text articles) on LinkedIn.
Linked is likely paying more for these exclusive “coaches and mentors”, often teenagers from TikTok or YouTube, than to the actual hand-picked creators themselves. Where $15,000 for weekly posts is not going to move the needle very much.
This is a highly flawed and problematic strategy!
For every seven creators, there’s one manager who holds weekly or biweekly calls to discuss content, Santalo said. In addition to mentorship, program participants can tune in to weekly chats about things such as audio best practices and managing finances. Hey but Santalo, don’t pick me who has only been a slave to LinkedIn content for the last few years.
Creators can also participate in “Cappy hours” (a play on CAP, the abbreviation for Creator Accelerator Program), where participants can network with each another and hang out. I’d love to hang out with you guys on Zoom calls, I’m fairly certain that would make me a better writer on things like A.I. and business.
“Through cash grants, ad credits and equipment, Pinterest will invest $1.2 million in underrepresented creators. The first of four cycles in 2022 is focused on Fashion and Beauty, and is sponsored by L'Oréal USA.”
Pinterest is working with brands on very specific kinds of niche verticals it’s known for, which makes sense. Meanwhile LinkedIn is trying to pivot away from seemingly professional and business content in its feed. LinkedIn has always had an identity crisis with a rapidly aging audience, but I’m seeing memorials on my feed, memories for people who have deceased prematurely. (I have been trying to train LinkedIn recommendation engine about what I want for years).
LinkedIn is Trying to Steal Creators
Microsoft doesn’t care about you, if you aren’t an influencer somewhere else already. LinkedIn just wants your followers from elsewhere! It wants to use Creators to build its own audience.
But Gigi Robinson, who uses her platform to discuss mental health and growing up as part of Gen Z, said the accelerator program is really only helping people who are already well-established on social media. LinkedIn’s first batch of accelerator program members include popular TikTokers, professional speakers and video game experts.
This of course as we saw with Microsoft Mixer, the clone of Twitch, is a strategy that has already failed many times. They seem to be repeating it on LinkedIn, in the hopes for a miracle. If I see a “memorial” on my Feed, that’s not exactly the positive content that would attract a GenZ audience to LinkedIn’s morbid and outdated feed.
Clearly there is a massive failure in leadership at the executive level at LinkedIn and at Microsoft in keeping up with current trends on the internet. I don’t know how else to put it. There is a lack of strategy in how to provide assistants to build the Creator Economy. There is a lack of funds going to the pockets of the actual Creators on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn had to sack LinkedIn China, without any good explanation. LinkedIn never launched its supposed Clubhouse clone product, maybe it was pushed to the Spring of 2022. LinkedIn has tried many features and failed at nearly every turn to produce an app that young people could celebrate and be active on. Microsoft seemingly wants to turn LinkedIn into yet another Ad revenue cash cow, without seemingly “authentic” content. Turn up the levers for positivity bias, to outrageous levels and hope for the best. That’s not how you build a Creator Economy platform. LinkedIn is already a cash-cow for its Sales Navigator alone.
LinkedIn Slow to Add In-House Monetization Tools
Even the chosen few Creators on LinkedIn hopes LinkedIn will add in-house monetization tools similar to what Instagram and TikTok offer for a larger group of creators. “Hopefully, in the future, we see a little bit more of a disbursement of funds,” she said. To read more of her thoughts read the Protocol article.
I too have been asking about if LinkedIn Newsletters will add monetization tools and a stripe feature. I received no response. My comments go unanswered. With well over 1,000 long-form articles, I’m among the most prolific bloggers in LinkedIn’s history. Ghosted, shunned, ignored. If this is how you treat the previous generation of creators, how will you treat the next LinkedIn?
So with all the positivity bias on LinkedIn where algorithms try to hack your attention with feel-good posts, there’s a darker side behind the platform one that’s ignoring the Creators and their livelihood. Executives that don’t want to share Ad-revenue, middle managers who will ignore you if you are even remotely “negative”.
What does it say about the ethics of people working at LinkedIn? Silicon Valley jobs, let’s not bother with the losers. Let’s let them be gig-economy workers for cheap, let’s give them nothing.
LinkedIn’s Turtle Approach to the Creator Economy
Let’s accelerate hiring Creator managers LinkedIn to clone your army at your own pace. As the Creator Economy evolves around you and disrupts whatever LinkedIn once was.
LinkedIn’s paid mentorship program and features like Creator Mode are still in their early stages. But Santalo said the accelerator program is slowly growing: It’ll be rolled out to several other countries in the coming months, and the resources offered to those in the program will expand to more users. “[We’ll] continue to expand the heart of the program, which really is coaching, incubator style.”
Let’s support the Creator Economy, one chosen creator at a time. Are you among the chosen few?
Meanwhile at Pinterest, they are learning from their initial efforts.
The updated program, which, as Pinterest notes, will be focused on creators from underrepresented backgrounds, will include four Creator Fund cycles, with a different focus each quarter.
The first elements of focus are:
Fashion/Beauty
Wellness
Lifestyle/Home
Food
Pinterest says that the more specific, topic-based approach will enable deeper learning for the chosen creators in each field, while Pinterest is also extending the training program from four weeks to five to provide even more opportunity for insight and development. Maybe I should sign up for a course on Coursera to learn how to become a Creator. Maybe Microsoft should acquire Coursera and build a real Ed-tech company, since it’s clear LinkedIn’s efforts have failed there as well.
The Creator Economy is just beginning but some companies have no clue.
In August, 2021 LinkedIn announced it would be scrapping its Stories format and going back to the proverbial drawing board to work on other short-form video content for the platform. It seems its still at the drawing board for the Creator Economy though it has decided to take the TikTok default approach highlighting content with themes of empathy, gratitude, inclusion and sentiment amplifying messages.
If only this supposed positivity was reflected in in-house monetization tools for real people, even if their posts are faked to fit with LinkedIn’s algo tweaking so that it can make more advertising revenue.