‍How would you as a Product Manager quantify the need for this feature?

Firstly, why do you think LinkedIn built this feature? You may be aware of this — As an author, you can always “choose who can see your post”. Is it anyone, connections only, or a specific group. If you choose “anyone”, then basically anyone on LinkedIn could view, like and comment on your post.

Since the “Like” feature only has positive vibes (Love, Like, Insightful, Curious, Celebrate), the only way through which someone could negatively / disrespectfully interact with your post was through comments.

If you were concerned of your post being “too public” or having experienced disrespectful interactions, then you could choose the audience of the post to be “Connections Only” (Just like “Friends only in Facebook posts”). Then why have this new / additional feature?

In my opinion, this feature will be useful to you if you want your content to be accessible to anyone (not just connections), and at the same time, you are expecting only trustworthy audiences (connections) to be able to comment.

Agreeing or disagreeing to the content of the post is secondary, but being respectful to each other while engaging on a professional public platform is primary — Which we can expect from our known audience (connections), and which may not be guaranteed from “everyone” on LinkedIn.

Now, how would you as a Product Manager quantify the need for this feature?

I could think of 2 ways.

1. Report — Authors reporting comments on their post
2. Delete — Authors deleting comments on their post
   
   

If an author is often reporting / deleting other’s comments (of hatred, discrimination, spam, harassment) on his post, then it indicates that he / she might feel uncomfortable posting in future. Considering that 1–3% users create content**(ref 1), it becomes very important to ensure their engagement on the platform doesn’t decline. Hence allowing to choose who can comment would give additional control to the author.

Now, as a PM, we could argue that, probably only 2 options could suffice —anyone OR no-one. Why have the option of “Connections only”?

Because data might have proven that — Often, the comments which were reported / deleted were of someone who is not in the author's connections.

Any other ways in which we could quantify the need of this feature? Please do share your thoughts through comments. :)

Though we all know the majority of people on LinkedIn are likely to have meaningful interactions on the platform, there could always be a minor case of disrespectful interactions. Even though the instances of reporting or deleting comments may be less (E.g. 3% of all the comments in a day, 10% of comments which were received by one person were reported / deleted), it still becomes important for social platforms to regulate such content.

I believe this could be one of the key initiatives to strengthen LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies**(ref 2) — Because till now the author only had control over the “views of the post”, and now the author has additional control over choosing audience to interact with his post, which feels more secure to the author.

**ref 1 — https://kinsta.com/blog/linkedin-statistics/

**ref 2 — https://blog.linkedin.com/2020/september/29/strengthening-our-professional-community-policies-to-keep-members-safe

Now that you get to decide on who is allowed to comment on your post, what do you think is the best option among the three?

Listing down the pros and cons.

Anyone? — Can expect high interaction, open to public opinion; Downside being susceptible to disrespectful comments

Connections Only? — Can expect meaningful interaction from trustworthy/ known audience; Downside being biased audience / limited opinion

No-one? — One case where this may be useful is in the case of job post; Where the expectation is to drop their CV to an email ID mentioned in the post, thereby avoiding spammers who comment saying “Interested”. The downside is that there could be only positive interactions through likes, which leaves no room for other’s opinion / feedback.

As a PM, when I come across any new features in my favourite apps, I try to think why they built the feature, how would they quantify, why it’s designed in that particular way. Though the answers may not be perfect, just thinking deep about it is interesting. If you are an aspiring PM, I would highly recommend you to write down such case studies of a particular feature, or do a UX teardown, because it would onboard you to the path of product and design thinking.

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