Mike Isaac

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LinkedIn Pushes In-Stream Promoted Jobs Ads

Now we’re starting to see why LinkedIn cares so much about beefing up its streams.

On Monday morning, the company began sticking its “promoted jobs” product into users’ main streams; that is, the Facebook- and Twitter-like never-ending flow of content that shows up in front of you as soon as you open your LinkedIn homepage.

The ads are a form of native content for the professional network — a paid way for recruiters and employers to stick their open positions in front of job seekers. Moreover, they’ll reach mobile device main streams, as well, where 30 percent of LinkedIn’s job-seeking users actually go to view open positions.

If you have a Facebook account (and I’m sure you do), you already know what these ads look like. It’s a native ad, similar to Facebook’s mobile app install ads, or Twitter’s promoted tweets. In other words, it looks like content and acts like content, but it’s also an ad.

Which begins to explain just why LinkedIn has revamped its entire look and feel over the last year. If it can look more like Facebook and Twitter, with more original and partner content in the feed, LinkedIn can boost both user engagement and the amount of paid ads it can insert into the stream.

Not to mention further diversifying the strength of LinkedIn’s revenue streams. Right now, the bulk of the company’s dollars come in through its paid recruiting products. LinkedIn wants to boost ad revenue, too, which is a smaller yet significant source of income.

Be on the lookout for the new ads, which you’ll start seeing as early as this morning.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald