LinkedIn has plans for an app to connect co-workers and for another product to help companies share content with employees
Upcoming LinkedIn Products Connect Co-Workers — LinkedIn, long the place to hunt for a new job, plans to make it easier to connect with the colleagues you already have.
Context & Ripple Effects
In January 2015, Re/code reported LinkedIn was prototyping two products aimed inward at the workplace rather than outward at job hunting: an app to connect co-workers with each other, and a tool letting companies push content to their own employees. Both shipped within the year — Lookup, the co-worker finder with texting built in, arrived in August, while Elevate launched in April to suggest and share stories on employers' behalf.
The move mattered because it extended LinkedIn's data advantage beyond recruiting: the same employee-profile graph that powered its data-rich revamp of job listings in December 2015 was now being repurposed as an everyday workplace utility.
First-order effects
- Employees gain a fast way to find, contact, and coordinate with colleagues they already have — turning LinkedIn from a job-search destination into a daily-use directory.
- Companies gain a sanctioned channel to distribute approved content through their own workforces, formalizing what had been ad hoc employee sharing.
Second-order effects
- Vendors selling internal communication and employee-advocacy tools face direct competition from a platform that already holds the employee identity graph they would otherwise have to build.
- Richer intra-company activity gives LinkedIn more behavioral data per member, feeding back into recruiter-facing products like the revamped jobs listings and employer profile views.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, professional networks consolidate around being workplace infrastructure first and hiring marketplaces second — a shift visible years later in LinkedIn's continued product sprawl, from Stories and video integrations in 2020 to a Clubhouse rival in 2021.
The trend: LinkedIn is steadily expanding from a recruiting marketplace into a suite of everyday workplace tools, monetizing its employee-graph data across more of the workday.