LinkedIn is a social network for professionals and alike. But as one of the major social platform on the internet, it's probably the last to need a way for users to share videos natively.
The company is letting people to natively upload videos to the business-centric social network through its mobile app. may be the last major social network to add a way for people to share videos natively, but it will share new information about the people who view those videos.
LinkedIn will finally let people natively upload videos to the business-centric social network through its mobile app. On July 13th, 2017, LinkedIn started testing the feature with a number of users in the U.S.. They've uploaded some videos that will play automatically with the sounds off when they appear on people's feed.
People can set the videos to autoplay, or disable the feature in their account settings page.
After thoroughly testing the feature, the company plans to roll out the video-sharing feature to all LinkedIn users worldwide, according to a LinkedIn spokesperson.
With LinkedIn bringing the video-sharing option to its mobile app, it is adding a dedicated video camera icon located next to the normal camera icon in the app's status update box. Users can tap on the new icon when they want to record a video using LinkedIn's in-app camera, or upload whatever they have saved on their device's camera roll.
Videos that can be uploaded should be at most 10 minutes long. According to the spokesperson of the company, the recommended length of videos range between 30 seconds to 5 minutes. Videos can also be either horizontal or vertical.
Users that uploaded a video, can see an analytics of its performance. Just like on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, they can see how many views, likes, shares their video has received. And just like Facebook, LinkedIn's video view will count the video has been played for at least 3 seconds.
The feature isn't groundbreaking or new in terms of social media networks. But for LinkedIn that is a business-oriented social platform, this could be a unique twist.
The feature can give video uploaders the information about their viewers, whether they are companies or employees, as well as their job titles. However, LinkedIn won't share a complete list of all viewers' employer names and job titles.
What's good for users, could also be good for advertisers. Although at the moment of release, LinkedIn isn't serving video ads on its service. But considering that other social networks have turned video to bolster their ad business, LinkedIn may just be a few steps behind.