LinkedIn CEO wants to allow anonymous posting and asks you for recommendation on whether or not they should build it. What do you say to the CEO?

Clarifying Questions

1. Would this anonymous posting feature be available to all users of LinkedIn or just LinkedIn premium?

   1. All users

2. Would this feature be available for mobile and desktop users?

   1. Both

3. Is there any data or information that we have on why the CEO is requesting this feature?

   1. No

Establish Structure

1. Mind if take a moment to prepare some thoughts?

2. Thinking through this question of building an anonymous posting feature, I want first to address the background on LinkedIn by addressing the business objectives so that we can determine if the feature makes sense, then discuss the users of the platform identifying the use cases for the feature, then finishing with an overall recommendation. How does that sound?

LinkedIn Background 

1. What it is? LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the internet. You can use LinkedIn to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career. The service can be accessed from desktop or mobile app (IOS and Android). The company ahs also expanded into other areas like with LinkedIn Learning offering a platform for people to learn more about professional topic areas

2. What are the business objectives? The firm earns revenue by selling advertising, recruitment services, and membership privileges. Therefore, this feature would need to increase revenue in one of these areas.

User Segmentation

1. Thinking about the LinkedIn user base, I would create a few buckets/

   1. Recruiters looking to hire

   2. Employees at a current company using the posting feature to share information about themselves/their company 

   3. New College Grads/College Students looking for jobs and sharing their accomplishments 

   4. Current employees looking to change their jobs

   5. Employees who are laid off and looking for work

2. With these user buckets, I feel that we should prioritize Employees at a current company using the posting feature to share information about themselves/their company. These users use the platform frequently and like to share accomplishments and/or milestones at their company. How does this sound?

Usecases

1. Now that we have our prioritized user of employees. Let's think about why they would need this feature.

   1. Alert network of bad company practices anonymously, afraid of retaliation 

   2. Desire to obtain feedback by remaining anonymous when sharing information about accomplishments (some people don’t want to post their lives online)

   3. Perhaps wanting people to review their resume blindly without their own personal information 

2. These are just some use cases of this feature I thought of.

Recommendation 

1. My intuition is not to recommend this feature to the CEO. There are way too many negative use cases of this feature for users, and currently, in the market, there are way too many forums for this type of anonymous posting (think Fishbowl or Reddit). Furthermore, this feature does not seem like it directly ties to revenue generation for the firm. 

2. Although my decision is not to recommend this, we could take a look and see if this is a requested feature from our current user base through internal customer data and perhaps explore this feature further if there is a clear business need.