How to Solve the "Politics Problem" At LinkedIn and Other Social Sites

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

This brief story is a slightly updated version of a post I made in the comments stream of Jeff Weiner's article, "My Thoughts On the Election," at LinkedIn's Pulse.


Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, wrote about the need for "healing" after the 2016 Election results, which, it seems, were a major surprise to the management and employee base at LinkedIn. Their reactions, says Weiner, "ran from shock and sadness to grief and mourning."


Democrats and others who voted for Hillary Clinton may empathize with such reactions. The vast majority of Republicans and others who voted for Donald Trump will not. But that wasn't the point of my comment on Weiner's post, which got many thousands of reader views and elicited hundreds of comments.


Weiner prefaced his post by saying he didn't often write about politics at LinkedIn or elsewhere. And many of the competing comments in the stream following his story continued a (mostly faux) debate we've all seen in such comments streams whenever an overt political story appears at LinkedIn or other social media sites.


I say that such debates are mostly faux, not only because so many comments-stream participants are Chatbots, rather than Humans, but also because there is now a very fine line between which kinds of articles are political and which are not.

I'm going to expand on this point in a follow-up story, which I'll try to post within the next couple of days.


But my comment on Jeff Weiner's article presented something else: my take on how LinkedIn and other social sites can satisfy both readers who love political posts and want to read them and those who say they do not.


Beyond this, I made a further observation and suggestion on how LinkedIn can effect a key bit of "healing" within Pulse itself, by making the facility more inclusive and reaching a large and important constituency of readers who feel left out.


Here, then, is my comment:


Jeff, since we Republicans and you Democrats remain gulfs apart on the Election and its aftermath, I am not going to comment on the political content of your post.


But as a very early initiator at LinkedIn, a Group manager, and an avid user of the site, I want to make two suggestions that I think would be eagerly approved of and embraced by LinkedIn users in the United States.


First of all, since there appear to be some users who don't want political posts in their Pulse feeds, how about seriously considering establishing some political channels among your existing channels?


There could be just one Politics Channel, which those (many) of us who like political stories could subscribe to. Or you could, in addition, establish separate LinkedIn channels for Democrats and Republicans. I think this would greatly increase, not decrease, viewing stats at LinkedIn Pulse and make everybody happy.


Second, many of us who are either members of your generation, Gen-X - now late 30s to early 50s - or my Generation, Baby Boomers - now 50s and 60s - are unhappy that there are now separate Pulse channels for Millennials and even High-school students, but no separate channels for Gen-Xers, Boomers, or the possibly substantial number of LinkedIn users who are older than Boomers.


We think this leads to a skewing of content at Pulse and its "Stories You Can't Miss" facility towards articles by, about, and for younger LinkedIn users versus mature LinkedIn users.


It just doesn't make sense to many of us. We all, don't we, want the site to be as INclusive as possible, appealing to as many constituencies as possible?


So if you are going to maintain separate channels for Millennials and High-Schoolers, please do establish similar channels for Gen-Xers, Boomers, and possibly Older-than-Boomers, too.


Thanks so much for reading this. Ellen Brandt


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Those are my suggestions, and I welcome reactions from fellow LinkedIn users - and eventually, cross fingers, from LinkedIn management.


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