Two weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that LinkedIn was jumping into games to help users "deepen relationships" through puzzle-based interactions. And on Wednesday, the social network owned by Microsoft was experimenting with short-form videos, according to TechCrunch.

It's almost as if LinkedIn is eyeing a whole new "type" of user -- one caught in limbo somewhere between two other well-known social networks.

Wordle's meteoric rise began on Twitter, and The New York Times ultimately ended up buying the web-based word game for a reportedly seven-figure sum. TikTok is well past the billion-user mark and just became the first non-game app to reach $10 billion in consumer spending-all for short-form video.

Splintering
Things have not been exactly the same since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and, within hours of finalizing the deal, renamed it X. According to the latest figures released, daily users of what used to be called Twitter have declined by nearly a quarter in the months since it became a plaything for one of the world's wealthiest individuals.

Ex-X users have been jostled for mindshare between federated competitors such as Mastodon and Bluesky, while the mighty Meta has thrown its hat into the ring with Threads. But this disaggregation left millions jumping half-heartedly between myriad different social networks, not quite sure where to hang out.

TikTok's pretty much like an alternative, next-gen version of Twitter, filled with short-form content. It's rife with all the trappings of influencers, hashtags and trending topics; a clear destination for those to jump into in some ways, however alien to many of those that grew up on Twitter.

Much like almost any other successful social network, it organically grew as the product of the right people at the right time with the right backers and the right technology to make it a scalable product in the hands of millions. You simply cannot lift-and-shift that community onto a new platform at the drop of a hat, and the audience splintering we've seen since was always going to happen.

Twitter-sized hole
This is where LinkedIn fills a giant hole in lots of peoples' lives. Of course, we have all made fun in the past years of the "professional social network" and chuckled at the self-congratulatory hustle culture that pervades the billion-plus community, but we all have LinkedIn accounts and have turned to it at various times when we needed to-do lists, such as when looking for a new job or trying to network. And now it is serving as the obvious fallback as the bird app flounders.

All of this brings us back to LinkedIn's latest efforts to move with the times. Microsoft doled out north of $26 billion for LinkedIn seven years ago, and it has largely been quiet about its performance in the years since — however, it has been making sounds about its growth rate of late. It revealed that LinkedIn raked in $15 billion for its 2023 fiscal year, nearly half of which came from corporate recruitment software. And just last week, LinkedIn said that premium subscriptions raked in $1.7 billion last year-the kinds of numbers that Musk can only dream of over at X.

The idea that LinkedIn has been something of a salvation for Twitter-ditchers has not been a new one, but we are starting to see LinkedIn jump on its latent potential as something more than what most people think it is. Obviously, LinkedIn can't shake off its "business" shackles completely, and you won't be seeing Taylor Swift or Ronaldo promoting themselves there anytime soon (fingers crossed), but it is evident that LinkedIn wants to get rid of being considered as a "stuffy social network for job seekers".

Of course, that does not mean LinkedIn will suddenly become a space where scores of Gen Zers come to get their fix of thought leadership served through short, punchy 10-second skits. And LinkedIn shouldn't attempt to be Twitter or TikTok-an entirely different species. But it can certainly borrow some of their special sauce and appeal to a broader demographic.

As other social networks back away from news, and as X is no longer the drive it once was for keeping current with what's going on in the world, LinkedIn was already leveraging this sea-change with more investment. And now with games and short-form videos in the mix, LinkedIn wants even more of the action.