SOCIAL
LinkedIn Looks to Make ‘Repost’ a Default Post Engagement Option
This is… well, I don’t know.
Last month, LinkedIn launched the first iteration of its new ‘Repost’ option on feed updates, which provides a simple way to help amplify a post to your LinkedIn audience.
That could be great for alerting your network to new job opportunities, industry-specific trend reports, great creators to follow, etc.
But as we noted at the time, it could also be problematic, in that it will additionally enable quick amplification of criticisms and negative comments.
And this will probably make it worse:

As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Nima Owji (and shared by Matt Navarra), LinkedIn is now looking to take its Repost option a step further, by making it the default option, with its own icon along the lower function bar on each post.
In some ways that makes sense. Right now, your post engagement options are ‘Like’, ‘Comment’, ‘Share’ and ‘Send’, with the latter providing the option to share the post via LinkedIn message. The ‘Share’ option prompts you to either repost the update, or ‘Share with your thoughts’, i.e. create a post with this update attached.
Updating that to ‘Repost;’ then is not a big change, and it could make it easier to amplify content in the app, and to ask your followers to amplify your posts by re-sharing to maximize reach.
The change here likely suggests that more people are simply reposting content anyway, which is why LinkedIn is looking to make it the default. But still, I do have some hesitations based on past implementations of the same.
Back in 2019, the man who invented the ‘retweet’ option on Twitter, Chris Wetherell, said that he regretted the feature in retrospect, after seeing how it could be used to amplify criticisms and negative opinions.
Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also had reservations about the option, noting at the same time that:
“We’re definitely thinking about the incentives and ramifications of all actions, including retweet. Retweet with comment for instance might encourage more consideration before spread.”
So while other apps are looking at the problems caused by straight re-sharing, LinkedIn’s actually looking to lean into it – which seems likely motivated by the push to maximize user engagement, as opposed to considering the potential impacts of such within the app.
I mean, you would expect that any re-sharing mechanic will be used differently on LinkedIn. The professional social network is not as anonymous as Twitter, and its feed is not as fast-paced, which likely lessens the motivation to re-share and engage with the conversation.
But still, I don’t know how much value it adds, in real terms, as opposed to simply juicing engagement.
In any event, LinkedIn seems to be pushing ahead, which could have an impact on how people interact within the app.
LinkedIn actually has a different variation of the Repost icon within its Help section at present:

It’ll be interesting to see what impact the change has, and hopefully, LinkedIn will provide some insight at some stage.
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
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