LinkedIn seems to be looking for any way it can to keep users engaged on its website and feels simple games might be a way of achieving this. Bounce rates can be a killer for a website, especially if there isn’t enough reason to click on toward something new after you have landed on what you were originally searching for. This is the company’s latest attempt to combat this.
You might not think of LinkedIn as a place for games, and it could be a desperate attempt at something on their end. But people do love simple games and various social networks (like Facebook) have had a lot of success with this within certain groups.
In the case of LinkedIn, it is focusing on just a few simple options, including Pinpoint, Crossclimb, and Queens. They are options like “guess the category” or trivia and make use of leaderboards for scoring so that users can compete against each other and those within your network can see (and you are timed). Each game can only be played once per day, similar to that of certain daily Wordle puzzles.
It’s an interesting idea as I (personally) have never stuck around LinkedIn longer than to visit the page for a single person I am searching for at any point in time. From there, the tab or browser is usually closed as I move on to other things. It’s also a great way of finding out which of your colleagues is brighter than the other.
You won’t find anything more immersive than that since LinkedIn just wouldn’t be the right platform for becoming the next Steam or anything, but this might just be enough to keep traffic from bouncing. At least, for a few plays of a game until they are back on the hunt for something new.
