LinkedIn Hashtags to enhance content discoverability

LinkedIn announced a new feature update to simplify content search and discoverability with keywords & #Hashtags. LinkedIn Hashtags are live now. Although LinkedIn maintains a different personality from other social media platforms, they have pivoted to imbibe the best of social media features.

In a blog post titled, ‘Tap Into Professional Knowledge with Content Search at LinkedIn’, the company revealed the new changes to its mobile app - Search and LinkedIn Hashtags

LinkedIn mobile users can now simply enter a keyword and unearth relevant information from amongst the other seemingly irrelevant ones. This solves a lot of issues such as looking for an older post is also easier as a keyword is all it requires.

Searching for a keyword yields results about posts, jobs and conversations to further fine tune a user’s search experience to their preferences.

Secondly, LinkedIn has now joined Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the hashtag club as they now offer hashtag support as a search tool. LinkedIn Hashtags were previously nothing more than playful embellishments but are now tappable and will lead users to posts using the same hashtag.

This further simplifies discovering relevant posts as users can add keywords from their posts as hashtags to amplify the reach and accessibility of their information.

Posts with highest interaction and relevance can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Top’ tab that LinkedIn is experimenting with.

With the newest changes, LinkedIn has also stated that privacy is of the essence as they have stated on their blog, “At LinkedIn we take your privacy seriously. The privacy settings you specify when you post or write an article are honored in our search results, i.e., if you share your post with your connections only, only they will be able to retrieve your post via search. Conversely, your search results contain public posts and posts shared by your connections. The same rules apply to hashtag search.”

The content search updates are being made available to English speaking users for now, on the iOS and Android users of the LinkedIn app. Surprisingly, Windows Phone users are not receiving the update which is odd as LinkedIn is a part of the Microsoft stable now.

Have you received the newest update on LinkedIn Hashtags ? What are your thoughts about it?