LinkedIn Launches Initial Rollout of its New ‘Funny’ Reaction

They’ve been threatening it for a while, and now, it’s finally here, with some LinkedIn users seeing this new alert in the app.

Yes, that’s right, you now have a new Reaction on LinkedIn, with ‘Funny’ being added to the six other emoji response options on LinkedIn posts.

Or you may have it – according to LinkedIn, the ‘Funny’ Reaction is gradually being rolled out, and isn’t available to everyone just yet.

But it is coming, giving you a simple way to express that a LinkedIn post ‘made you laugh, felt humorous, or offered light-hearted fun in a professional context.’

Professional context being the key parameter that LinkedIn wants to emphasize, because there’s a lot of untargeted junk on the platform, posted by users seeking attention.

Although even some of the contextual stuff is pretty bad, as displayed in this montage from @SamBahreini.

As happens on all social platforms, the big trending posts on LinkedIn 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 for the regular users who are shown the exact same joke a billion times, it’s not the best experience.

Still, the good thing for LinkedIn is that the increase of junk posts is a side effect of more engagement, with people seeking out hacks and tricks like this because of the benefits that posting on LinkedIn can bring.

Indeed, the platform has seen record levels of engagement growth over the past two years, and with the current economic situation in a state of flux, you can bet that a lot more people will be using LinkedIn in the coming year too, as they change roles, and seek out new opportunities.

But still, I’m not entirely sure that a funny reaction is that beneficial, in that it will likely incentivize more off-topic posts to get these responses.

For context, the funny reaction has been a highly requested feature.

Back in February, LinkedIn’s 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.”

So whether I personally think that it’s good or not is not really relevant, people want it, and LinkedIn’s looking to give the people what they desire.

If you don’t see it yet, you will soon, while you can read more about LinkedIn’s ‘funny’ reaction here.