The company is partnering with Replit, Lovabl, Descript and Relay.app on the feature and is working on integrations with fellow Microsoft-owned GitHub as well as Zapier. LinkedIn has always allowed users to add various skills and certifications to their profiles. But what makes the latest update a bit different is that users aren't self-reporting their own qualifications. Instead, LinkedIn is allowing the companies behind the AI tools to assess an individual's relative skill and assign a level of proficiency that goes directly to their profile.
One of the earliest turning points in personal branding, one that made career-minded professionals understand that they're responsible for their careers and the visibility that shapes them, was the launch of LinkedIn in 2003. Since then, career visibility has followed a simple rule: polish your resume, keep your LinkedIn profile current and compelling, and show up to meetings awake. But that rule no longer holds, thanks to AI.
At the start of the year, we asked 11 experts to share their social media predictions for 2025. They pointed to big shifts - world-building, private communities, AI in everything and everywhere, LinkedIn's rise, and a creator economy moving toward more sustainable businesses. Now that the year is behind us, it's a good moment to pause and check the tape. Some predictions held up almost perfectly. Others played out more slowly or looked different than expected.
As AI continues lowering the barrier to malicious identity spoofing and fraud, Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn's vice president of product for Trust,told ZDNET that the program is designed to drive more trustworthy internet experiences and user-to-user engagement. "It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what's fake," Rodriguez noted. "That, for us, was the driver because LinkedIn is about trust and authentic connections."
Replying to comments on your LinkedIn posts can boost engagement by around 30%, according to a massive analysis by Buffer's data scientist, Julian Winternheimer. Julian analyzed 72,000 LinkedIn posts from nearly 25,000 accounts, and the pattern was clear: When creators engage back in their comments, their posts perform significantly better relative to their own baseline. This is one of my favorite data analyses we've done at Buffer, because it's hard evidence that giving back goes a long way.
According to numerous media sources and eyewitness accounts, the person you've known for almost a full decade, the one who seemed like a well-adjusted and productive member of society, is also shadowing as a person who writes long posts on LinkedIn talking about things like maximizing client engagement and how to nail job interviews at marketing firms. It's like your friend is secretly a completely different person-an alter ego who has completely immersed herself in the bizarre and alien social ecosystem of LinkedIn.
According to his account, Umang matched with a woman on Bumble and exchanged the usual introductory messages, basic questions, light conversation and a typical "getting to know each other" vibe. After a day of normal interactions, he assumed the match was progressing like any other early-stage dating chat. However, the next morning took a bizarre turn when he received a phone call, not from his match, but from her mother.
What makes LinkedIn uniquely powerful is not just its scale but its authenticity. It is the only major social platform where most people are verifiably real - not bots, not burners, not pseudonyms. It holds the cleanest, most trustworthy identity graph on the internet: a network tied to real employers, real skills, real locations, and real career histories. This should have been LinkedIn's greatest advantage. It is the foundation every modern professional platform wishes it had.
LinkedIn is facing mounting calls to suspend the account of Sam Wall, a 55-year-old digital marketing strategist from Cheadle, who was jailed for 28 months on Friday after pleading guilty to stalking, harassment and malicious communication. Despite her conviction and a court-issued restraining order, Wall's LinkedIn Premium profile - with nearly 27,000 followers - remained active at the time of writing.
Not long ago, I worked with an executive who was nervous about updating his LinkedIn profile. He worried their boss would assume they were planning to leave. I encouraged him to do it anyway. A funny thing happened: Their boss noticed, pulled them aside, and asked why they were refreshing their profile. Instead of leading to suspicion, it sparked a conversation about their value to the company. Within weeks, he got a raise.
Global creative company Buck has joined with LinkedIn to give a visual refresh to the platform's in-app milestone moments. Described as "a big glow-up" by LinkedIn's director of product design Audrey Davis, the redesign includes a new suite of animations that hope to make celebrating on LinkedIn a more expressive and engaging experience. Prioritising inclusive character representation, creative metaphors that "connect across cultures", and the blue of the LinkedIn brand, these new illustrations capture a range of milestones and emotions.