LinkedIn adds online learning tools to redesigned website
Networking giant unveils some fresh products for its users, including online learning, messaging and a redesigned website
LinkedIn isn’t only getting a new look, it’s making a stronger push into online learning and messaging.
When LinkedIn purchased online learning company Lynda. com for $1.5 billion in 2015 — its largest acquisition to date — the Mountain View tech firm’s executives said they planned to leverage data about working professionals to link them with the right online courses.
Now that vision is coming to fruition.
Using data about a members’ jobs, skills and experience, company executives said Thursday that they’re integrating thousands of tutorials from Lynda. com into its website as part of a new product called LinkedIn Learning. Members will see courses recommended to them on their news feed, be able to see who viewed these videos and recommend classes to their employees.
“They bought this company, and they want to get some value out of it. I think the concept is sound,” said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies
Associates.
With 450 million members worldwide, LinkedIn Learning might appeal more to the tech-savvy, Kay said, but it’s hard to say at this point if online learning on a social media site will go mainstream.
But as new tech tools change the way people work, oreven displace jobs, LinkedIn said Thursday that the new tool could help employees remain competitive and facilitate businesses’ efforts to retrain their workforces.
Advancements in technology such as robotics and artificial intelligence could result in a net loss of 5 million jobs globally by 2020, according to a report by the World Economic Forum. The organization’s findings were based on a survey of 15 economies that account for about 65 percent of the world’s total workforce.
“Technology will increasingly be displacing existing workers, and the idea that you can study a skill once and have a job for the rest of your life — those days are over,” said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.
LinkedIn Learning, which is available today, costs $24.99 per month. It’s also included in premium subscriptions, but prices vary for companies that may want to use the tool to train their employees. Bertelsmann, Box, Ellie Mae, NBCUniversal and Viacom were among the companies that helped test out the new product.
Eventually, LinkedIn Learning could evolve into a platform, allowing others to add their own courses.
“The harsh reality is that the useful shelf life of skills has shrunk to less than five years. If I was a betting woman, which I’m not, I would bet that’s highly optimistic,” Tanya Staples, LinkedIn’s senior director of content and production, said at an event at the company’s San Francisco office.
LinkedIn is also redesigning the business-oriented social media site’s desktop page so it looks cleaner, revamping its feed to show people more relevant news and releasing new tools for messaging, including a chatbot that will use data from Google Calendars to help users schedule meetings. The messaging chatbot and redesigned desktop page will be rolled out later this year.
Other tech firms, including Facebook and Microsoft, also have been drumming up hype for chatbots, computer software programs that mimic human conversation. But the technology, which can help people purchase goods or quickly obtain weather forecasts, still has a long way to go — with some chatbots getting stumped if you text them certain phrases.
About half of LinkedIn’s members use the company’s messaging service every week.
Weiner said the tech firm was working on the new products long before Microsoft’s June announcement that it was purchasing LinkedIn for $26 billion. As Microsoft invests more in conversational computing, Weiner anticipates that LinkedIn will be able to improve what it’s doing with chatbots.
“We’re going to be able to accelerate what we’re capable of doing with regards to bots on LinkedIn,” he said. “But for now, the team is really to starting to walk before they run, and we want to figure out some really specific use cases.”