LinkedIn Adds Dwell Time to Measure Content

LinkedIn feeds are the foundation of a user’s experience. The platform’s AI team aims to make the professional community productive. In line with this, LinkedIn adds dwell time to measure content on 12 May 2020.

 

Dwell time is the amount of time spent by a LinkedIn user on a feed. Formerly, the platform measures content based on clicks and viral actions – reacts, comments, and shares. But the A1 team realizes that there are shortcomings to these algorithms.
Clicks may be rare for passive audiences. Users may have clicked a post but immediately abandoned it.
Re-sharing posts may create a downstream effect. When a user shares the post, his connections will be able to see it. But it will not be recorded as views on the post itself. While reacts and comments can boost the feed even if these are not related to that feed.

Because of these uncertainties, LinkedIn considers dwell time. Their engineers found out that this factor is reliable because users spend more time on updates they find engaging. It will now measure the time spent on the content after a click, and the time spent when half of the feed is visible.

Implications for Marketers:

LinkedIn is not the only platform who uses dwell time. Facebook uses it as well. Adding such factor to measure a LinkedIn post increase the chances of users seeing feeds they’ll engage with. Thus, marketers can grab the opportunity by crafting relevant and meaningful content. They should aim not only to capture the audience’s attention but hold them for a time to engage in the post.

Reference: https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2020/understanding-feed-dwell-time