I’m just joking! But I have to admit something: I’ve been on LinkedIn every day lately and I’m having a great time. Last week, the company announced that it would be adding three games to its app, both on desktop and mobile, as a mere ploy to get you to open the app every day. I hate to say it, but it works.
The three games are called Exact, Cross climbAnd Queens. Exact is fundamental The New York Times‘ Categories Game, but in reverse: the game gives you items and you have to guess the category. Cross climb is like that Just‘ Mini crossword puzzle, with the special feature that you then have to rearrange the answers in a word ladder. And Queensmy favorite game of the three games – and probably the hardest – is something like a Minesweeper-y assume a Sudoku where you have to place a queen in every row, column and color without any overlap. (It’s remarkable and almost outrageous how closely LinkedIn follows this Just‘ Formula. Give it a few weeks and I’m sure there will be a twist Wordle and a complete crossword puzzle somewhere here.)
You can play all three games in about 10 minutes, and they cause exactly the same daily excitement as that Just‘ game cycle does. None of these are really hard, although there have been days when they are Exact Categories seem particularly esoteric or my pre-coffee brain just can’t handle them Queens. But before I knew it, I was coming back to all three games every day.
I don’t like that my morning routine now involves opening LinkedIn – there’s a direct link that goes straight to the games, which is helpful – but it’s a pretty smart move for the company. The Just“The bet on gaming paid off in a big way,” said Alex Hardiman, the company’s chief product officer Vanity Fair last year that “a lot of people actually buy the bundle through our gaming product.” (The Vanity Fair The story also references a joke often heard in media circles these days: that the Just is a cooking and crossword puzzle company with a sideline in news.) This Just I just opened this Wordle Archive to give people even more gaming content, saying the game is still played by “tens of millions of players every week.” Give people a fun, replayable game with a leaderboard and streak tracker, and they’ll come back.
Give people a fun, replayable game with a leaderboard and streak tracker, and they’ll come back
Keeping people coming back is critical for LinkedIn because LinkedIn wants to be more than just “the place to look for jobs.” The Microsoft-owned company desperately wants to be a full-fledged social network: it tried to be more like TikTok, went big into live audio in the brief moment when everyone was interested in live audio, tried LinkedIn -Stories a thing, and continues to shift the product to posts and newsfeeds rather than just boring old job postings.
It’s all a bit off-putting, but it works. Microsoft reported in April that LinkedIn revenue was up 10 percent year-over-year, and CEO Satya Nadella said engagement on LinkedIn hit a record high last quarter. If getting people to play games and connect with semi-random connections through their results makes people stay on LinkedIn longer, then you can bet there will be more. And then there’s probably going to be some weird stuff when recruiters exclude people based on their qualifications Cross climb Score. I don’t know, it’s going to be weird. It’s LinkedIn.
So, reluctantly, kudos to LinkedIn for wowing me. However, I only have one request: Can’t we all do this thing where we share our results? These colored blocks were a big part of it Wordle went viral, but no one needs it. Especially not on LinkedIn. I need to read Broetry.