Games have come to LinkedIn in the last week causing the most controversy there’s been in a while.
Some people see them as great fun, really enjoy them and are pleased to have them on the platform.
Others can’t see the point, believe LinkedIn should be primarily for business and won’t be bothering with them.
Which camp do you fall into?
If you’ve not seen them yet, there are three options which you can literally play with at https://www.linkedin.com/games/
The aim of LinkedIn games is to keep members on the site longer. This in turn increases revenues for the company as longer dwell time is a factor in attracting advertising.
However, in an eye-watering oversight, others can see you’re playing (or have been) and should an employer discover a staff member supposedly on LinkedIn to work but playing games instead, it might cause problems.
Another reason why LinkedIn might have taken this approach is generationally-based. The company wants to attract a younger audience and may see this as a vehicle to achieve that.
And then there’s the FOMO factor. Other platforms have games therefore LinkedIn needs to as well, the corporate thinking may go. In general, LinkedIn is well behind other platforms in introducing such features.
However, the fact remains that LinkedIn is a business platform. People are here to do business. People are on the platform during the business day for business reasons. If we want games, we need only pick up our phones where many of us already have at least a few game apps loaded for those idle moments.
LinkedIn is primarily used for networking. The games so far offered appear to be solitary pursuits.
All this aside, there’s no question games have been enthusiastically greeted by many. Whether they will keep members on the platform longer over time remains to be seen.