LinkedIn ‘Playing With’ the Addition of Games to Its Platform

LinkedIn says it’s exploring a gaming factor for its employment networking platform.

“We’re enjoying with including puzzle-based video games inside the LinkedIn expertise to unlock a little bit of enjoyable, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the chance for conversations,” a spokesperson instructed PYMNTS Sunday (March 17). “Keep tuned for extra!”

The information was first reported Saturday (March 16) by TechCrunch, which famous that LinkedIn appears to be aiming to faucet the “puzzle-mania” that helped video games like Wordle — now owned by The New York Occasions — go viral.

In keeping with that report, app researchers have begun uncovering code that illustrates the work LinkedIn is doing. One researcher, Nima Owji, stated one concept LinkedIn seems to be tinkering with entails participant’s scores being organized by office, with companies being ranked in line with these scores.

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, whose possession of Xbox and Activision Blizzard make it a gaming titan. Earnings from the corporate’s video games sector got here to $7.1 billion, greater than Microsoft comprised of Home windows, a primary for the corporate.

Per TechCrunch, LinkedIn declined to say how Microsoft is concerned within the networking platform’s gaming efforts, or if it was concerned in any respect.

Nonetheless, LinkedIn does give Microsoft an enormous alternative to develop its gaming enterprise, because the platform introduced final yr it had surpassed 1 billion customers.

Earlier this month, LinkedIn Chief Working Officer Dan Shapero stated the corporate earned $1.7 billion in income in 2023, with its premium subscribers growing by 25%.

This uptick was pushed partly by LinkedIn’s integration of members-only options that embody synthetic intelligence (AI) instruments designed to enhance person expertise and the platform’s job searching/recruitment choices.

Final yr additionally noticed stories that Microsoft was in talks with companions to launch a cell gaming retailer that may compete with related shops run by Apple and Google.

Phil Spencer, the top of Microsoft’s Xbox online game division, revealed the corporate’s plans throughout an interview on the CCXP comics and leisure conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Though he offered no particular launch date, Spencer stated the shop was in all probability not “a number of years away,” per a Bloomberg Information report. “I believe that is prior to that.”