Once upon a time, personal or honest takes were regarded as awkward and professionally desperate
You can definitely tell how old someone is by the way they use LinkedIn. If someone announces a job move by saying they have “some personal news” they are definitely Gen X. I’m a Xennial so just super-awkward on every social platform; I’m torn between wanting to look/sound “grown up” and just wanting to share all of the things everywhere.
LinkedIn, though, is absolutely crushing it in terms of engagement and revenue. If you think about it, the main feed is very different to how it used to be, and that’s a function of younger generations entering the workforce, as well as more people working from home. It’s difficult to remember to be super-professional when you’re still in your running gear and you’ve just hung up the washing between Zoom calls.
As this article discusses, the interplay between the generations on LinkedIn is really interesting. It’s more likely that older generations are believers in working from an office in a hierarchical structure; it’s more likely that younger generations are opposed to both of those things. I still find it an annoying place to kind-of-have-to hang out. I’d prefer it didn’t exist, or at least prefer that it had a different overall vibe. But, while it is the main professional network, I’m going to share all of the things there.
Last week, Microsoft revealed that the site is seeing record engagement, with comments on the platform up 37% year over year. Moreover, millions of people have now signed up for LinkedIn Premium; the company revealed that it’s earned more than $2 billion in revenue from its AI-laden premium service in the last 12 months. Indeed, LinkedIn more broadly contributes healthily to Microsoft’s bottom line — the division delivered $16 billion in revenue in 2024, more than The New York Times, Zoom, and Docusign put together.
[…]
Younger generations tend to reflexively reject spending time on the same online social media platforms as their parents (here’s looking at you, Facebook). But, unfortunately for the youth, you do tend to turn into your parents as you age, and LinkedIn is no exception. As Gen Z has entered the workforce, they seem to have no problem with the site, with the number of American Gen Z users on LinkedIn estimated to have risen 14% in 2024, per Insider Intelligence. But those younger users post on the site in a very different way.
Once upon a time, personal or honest takes were regarded as awkward and professionally desperate on LinkedIn. But being a so-called “thinkfluencer” in 2025 is increasingly a strategic way to boost your “personal brand” (should you desire to have such a thing). After a number of conversations with small business owners over the last few months, the reality is that posting every single day on LinkedIn, even if it feels uncomfortable at times, is a bona fide way of bringing in leads.
[…]
With more and more people dipping their toes into remote working, definitions of what’s socially acceptable to share at work are also changing. It’s this interplay between generations and workforces (work-from-home vs. work-from-office), and the fact that some make serious money from the platform, that makes LinkedIn — for lack of a better word — weird.
Source: Sherwood
Image: Never Dull Studio