Kipp Bodnar on LinkedIn's Gamification Gambit - Game On or Game Over?

Kipp Bodnar on LinkedIn's Gamification Gambit - Game On or Game Over?

LinkedIn Games: A Brilliant Move or a Misstep? 🎮🤔

LinkedIn is reportedly working on in-app games, a move that has ignited a wide range of opinions. In our latest episode of Unsolicited Feedback, co-hosts Joff Redfern and Fareed Mosavat, joined by HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar, delved into this topic.

We’ve shared our thoughts below, and we’d love to hear yours! Tune in next Thursday for more Unsolicited Feedback, where we’ll discuss the growing surge of martech tools.

Context: LinkedIn is testing the gamification waters, with companies ranked based on their employees' gaming scores. The company has confirmed these rumors, though we've only seen a few early screenshots. The games, a mix of puzzles and mini-games, seem reminiscent of the New York Times' daily games. But the question remains: is this what LinkedIn users need or want?

🤷‍♂️ Either Moronic or Brilliant, But Unlikely In-Between 🤷‍♂️

The initial reactions are mixed. Some see it as an unnecessary addition, while others speculate it could be a strategic move towards gamification for credentialing and learning. So, we’re jumping into the conversation too.

From Kipp:

“I just don't think it's necessary. Normally when something is really good, you can draw the line back and be like, ‘Oh, this company is obsessed with getting this right. And this is a part of getting this macro thing, right? And I can't draw the line back super clearly. There's arguments you could make it's around experimenting with gamification for credentialing and learning and other things that could be potentially very interesting to LinkedIn longer term.

But, if it's really just kind of puzzle type games and you're just trying to test the efficacy of gaming within the platform, it seems askew from the core mission of what they're trying to accomplish.”

From Joff:

“Maybe there's some element of education where it's like coding challenges and somehow it's related to skills assessment. One of the things that we talked to a bunch about when I was at LinkedIn is we said, ‘The resume has been around for 800 years but if you really want to understand what someone's skills are, having people tell you what they said they did is not quite as effective.’ If I'm hiring an engineer, I could go over to GitHub and I could look at what they've contributed into the code repo and that's actually really helpful. I can read your code, see how many people have forked it, how many followers you have, how many stars you have and I could be able to evaluate that skill. [To give them the] benefit of the doubt, maybe it's somehow related to skills assessment, but I honestly don't know.”

Fareed says: “I'll give a cynical take. One of the things I'm impressed with with LinkedIn is that they have continued to be able to do a really good job of driving engagement on the platform. And, they have done this with a repeated set of reinventions with the feed with more long form content, with the collaborative articles AI stuff that they've created recently, etc., They're very good at building engagement growth loops. This feels a little like someone's really good idea to drive daily engagement is like, well, Wordle is popular, and the people who play Wordle play it at work, so let's put Wordle on the work platform on LinkedIn and have it there.”

The question remains: Is this a game-changer or just a distraction from LinkedIn's core mission?

🎯 Gamified Skills Assessment Feels Like The Closest Tie To Linkedin’s Core Mission 🎯

LinkedIn's vision is to bring economic opportunity to every member of the global workforce. So, how does gaming fit into this? Could it be a tool for skills assessment or a way to engage middle-skill workers? Or is it just a clever tactic to drive daily engagement?

Kipp speculates that if this leak is a very small part of a much larger effort to build skill verification ladders with verifiable data, it’s the holy grail. But that’s, a big jump from the few screenshots we’ve seen to date.

🏆 Not Sure Anyone Wants To Be On A LinkedIn Gaming Leaderboard 🏆

If this is about engagement (as the screenshots indicate), leaderboards can be a double-edged sword. They can drive competition and engagement, but they can also create unwanted signals. Do companies want to top the leaderboard for the most games played at work? Probably not.

Assuming that they are heading towards “Wordle” for linkedIn, Fareed says, “My concern about this is you don't make leaderboards people don't wanna be on. Those are bad leaderboards. So the joke is you never want a leaderboard of who sent the most messages in the cat's channel or the food channel in Slack. That's a terrible leaderboard because nobody wants to win that leaderboard. It looks like you are not doing your job, right?”

Perhaps this is just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of a larger plan to build an engagement platform. Or maybe it's a misstep. Only time will tell. But one thing's for sure: LinkedIn's move has got us all talking.

So, what's your take on LinkedIn's gaming gambit? Is it a brilliant strategy or a misguided move?