LinkedIn 2026 Foretold: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

A LinkyDink Fanboy's New Year Predictions!

UGLY: One thing will never change – LinkedIn's in it for the MONEY!  LinkedIn is not a philanthropic, charitable organisation – like most of its Members, it's a business. Its Mission is to make money for Microsoft and their shareholders. LinkedIn's tactic for persuading Members to upgrade their Accounts has usually been not to offer additional functionality for the money, but to take away (or heavily restrict) functions that we currently use, and put them behind a paywall.

GOOD & BAD: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will prevail right across the platform as AI is added to  existing operations, such as the AI-Hiring Assistant, AI-powered job summaries, custom mock interviews, AI-assisted search capabilities, and 'Auto-targeting' and 'Draft with AI' aids in the Ad Campaign Manager.  AI will become integral to the user experience, powering everything from Content creation and Analytics to highly personalized ad targeting and lead qualification. AI will automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows, but bad actors will abuse it to replace the human element in network building, and creating and posting bland, anodyne Content and Comments.

GOOD: Enhanced Analytics and Insights (such as 'Saves' and 'Sends' metrics) will track how many users bookmark posts and share them via private messages, giving Creators better insights into what Content resonates. LinkedIn's real-time notifications show how Posts drive Profile views and Follower growth.

UGLY: LinkedIn will carry on 'borrowing' trendy ideas from other Social platforms - and most will continue to fail! Even business people don't have LinkedIn as their first choice to play games, or watch TikTok-style videos – others do it better...

BAD: LinkedIn's income from Recruiting could come under threat if huge numbers of white-collat jobs are replaced by AI - and the proposed OpenAI Jobs Platform will directly compete with LinkedIn. Postings for entry-level jobs in the U.S. have declined about 35% since January 2023, and some predict AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs before 2030. LinkedIn may need to replace the lost revenue by increasing prices.

GOOD: Native Commerce and in-platform features could potentially be introduced to boost LinkedIn's revenue stream, such as paid lead generation functions, gated content, and perhaps even transaction capabilities, to keep users and business activities within the platform ecosystem, and reduce friction in the buyer journey.

GOOD & BAD: LinkedIn's Video-First Content Strategy: Short-form, vertical video content and live streaming are great formats for dynamic, human-centred storytelling and capturing attention on mobile devices. But relatively few Members post Content of any kind, and it's doubtful whether the majority of this minority will find the time (or confidence with the technology) to choose video over text and document Posts any time soon.

BAD: Content saturation will rise, and quality will fall, as sales pitches and self-promotion become easier than ever to produce and post with AI. Spam messages will continue to proliferate at the expense of authentic engagement and genuine professional networking.

GOOD: The rise of Private Communities and DMs: Valuable conversations will continue to move away from the main feed and into more personal, focused spaces like direct messages (DMs), newsletters, and private groups, fostering deeper relationships and authenticity. Genuine, vulnerable, and human-centric content always builds trust more effectively than polished corporate messaging.

GOOD: The new 360Brew Algorithm changes favour Users who consistently post about specific, niche topics, rewarding topic authority over general seniority or high follower counts. It now promotes Posts to a constituency of genuinely interested and active Members it has identified, rather than just showing them to your close Connections. More focus and less fluff? And will this be the beginning of the end for engagement pods?

THE BOTTOM LINE: LinkedIn in 2026 will be more AI-powered and feature-rich, but faces serious competitive threats from OpenAI, ongoing content quality issues, and an 'authenticity/identity crisis' as it attempts to balance a professional networking community with an engagement-driven business social media platform.