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It’s easy to mock LinkedIn for its “hustle culture” posts and toxic corporate positivity, but that’s exactly what’s making the company a lot of money.
What happened: LinkedIn has started testing a paid tier for small businesses called Premium Company Page. For US$99 a month (or $839.88 annually), companies can get help from AI to write their posts, plus features to build follower counts and track engagement.
- LinkedIn has been exploring a lot of new features over the last few months to see what sticks, from a TikTok-style video feed to word games to AI-powered tools.
- It is also getting its own influencers and weird memes.
Why it matters: LinkedIn has evolved from a website for job hunting and often-cringey thought leadership to a platform with more than one billion users. And now it’s not just trying to bring in more people, but giving users more reasons to pay for premium memberships.
- Until recently, LinkedIn Premium was a pretty niche proposition for specific users, like recruiters, job seekers, or people generating sales leads.
- Now, revenue from memberships tops US$1.7 billion annually. That’s less than half of what it’s estimated to make from advertising, but growing more than twice as fast.
Zoom out: People across sectors are looking for new online communities after fleeing X, but they haven’t coalesced on alternatives like Threads or Bluesky. TikTok hosts lots of business and work content, but it also has a higher risk of bad takes getting dunked on by Gen Z. LinkedIn — with its built-in positivity and corporate focus — seems like an obvious home.