Pods are ruining LinkedIn’s credibility
I’ve long been aware of the practice, but up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t have a scoobies what LinkedIn pods are.
You might not either, so here’s a quick definition:
A LinkedIn pod is a group of people who agree to engage with each other’s posts by reacting, commenting, and reposting, with the intention of being boosted by the LinkedIn algorithm.
These groups exist across LinkedIn and other social media sites. Popular ones include Game of Content (https://lnkd.in/eP-yPJj9) and LinkedIn Growth Hackers (https://lnkd.in/e3HWCJDa).
Here’s an example of a post that — well — do I even need to say? (https://lnkd.in/entBTpHU)
Firstly, the video does not belong to the original poster. I took a screenshot of the first frame and did a Google Lens search. Hundreds of duplicates appeared in the search results.
Anyway, I covered copyright infringement a few months ago, so let’s focus on the comments this time:
- helpful
- Great. Please, can I have your email address?
- Very helpful and time saving ✅
- Valuable share
- I think this is helpful
- Very useful information
- Helpful excel tricks
- Amazing work👌
- Helpful share
- Awesome shortcuts 👍
- This will help me
- Excel tips
- Very helpful
- Very useful 👍
- Very useful
- Helpful! This will
- Great 👍
- Love this
- Thanks for posting
- Thanks for sharing
- Thanks for sharing
- Thanks for posting
- Helpful! This will
- Very useful! Thnks
- Thanks for sharing this valuable post
- Fantastic share
- Love this
- Excellent
- Helpful! This will
- Great share
- Thank you for sharing
- Thanks for posting
- Thanks for sharing
- Thanks for posting
- Thanks for sharing
- Thanks for posting
- Thanks for sharing
- Thanks for sharing
- Useful
- Very Useful
- Great Share
- Great Share
- Nice Share
- ██████████
- Great
- useful post !
- Helpful tips
- Useful one
- Helpful share ██████████ 👍
- Nice Share 👍🏻
- Helpful Excel trick you’ve share ██████████ 👍
- Useful information ██████████
- Helpful information ██████████
- Wonderful
- Helpful! This will help all the excel users, ██████████
- thanks for posting
- I’ll keep this in mind
- Great! ██████████
- Hahaha
- ██████████ 👍
- ██████████
- Brilliant
- Thanks for sharing
- Thank you for sharing
Names have been redacted.
As of 2023-08-13 14:01, this post has amassed 565 reactions, 108 comments, and 68 reposts.
To make matters worse, 44 of the comment responses consist of a mere ‘👍’.
None of this has gone unnoticed. Over at X, engineer Daniel O’Shea responded to colleague Chris Bakke‘s post (https://lnkd.in/eFVUiHUX) by suggesting X was planning on building a rival to break LinkedIn’s long-standing monopoly in the professional networking sphere.
We don’t know any more at this stage, but something appears to be in the pipeline.
Interesting stuff. Watch this space.
