LinkedIn launches messaging service

The social platform’s director of product management said the feature allows users to have ‘meaningful yet lightweight’ conversations with professional contacts. 

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Still, it doesn’t exactly appear that LinkedIn understands how professionals are using instant messaging. Take this excerpt from a blog post from Mark Hull, LinkedIn’s director of product management:

As you would over text or in-person, it’s now easier for you to have meaningful yet lightweight ways to reach out and light up your professional relationships through conversations.

If you’re having a light, informal conversation with co-workers, LinkedIn is certainly not the place it’s being done. Those conversations happen through G-chat, WhatsApp, Facebook or any number of instant messaging applications. It’s difficult to think of LinkedIn ever being a home for one-to-one conversation.

Meanwhile, the platform has completely missed the boat in jumping into the workflow management business. Everything LinkedIn’s messaging service does, Slack does better and more effectively.

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