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LinkedIn enters news curation with Trending Storylines rollout

Trending Storylines is a feed of news stories and topics relevant to a person's industry, curated through algorithms and human editors.
Written by Natalie Gagliordi, Contributor
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LinkedIn Trending Storylines on mobile.

LinkedIn may be regarded as the go-to social network for professionals, but the company has long struggled with weak user engagement and time spent on site.

A redesign of its desktop site back in January was an attempt to address such issues and improve the overall experience for LinkedIn users, and now the company is turning to Facebook-like news curation as another ploy to keep users engaged.

On Wednesday LinkedIn debuted Trending Storylines, which is basically a feed of trending news stories and topics relevant to a person's industry. The stories are curated through a combination of human editors and algorithms and extends beyond someone's immediate connections.

Each curated storyline is uniquely tagged so users can follow certain topics and influencers and each story includes a summary of the topic and links to additional coverage -- all of which works to refine the content of one's curated feed.

The product has similarities to both Facebook's trending topics section and Twitter's Moments feature, but LinkedIn's incarnation is aimed primarily at business users. Clearly LinkedIn is hoping this kind of business-focused news curation will encourage users to spend more time on-site, where things like sponsored jobs and posts can generate more revenue.

Trending Storylines are rolling out Wednesday on both desktop and mobile, starting in the US. LinkedIn said it will eventually expand the service to include more countries and languages.

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