In a bid to increase user engagement and connection, LinkedIn is officially rolling out three new daily word and logic games globally - Queens, Crossclimb, and Pinpoint. The professional networking platform had been quietly testing these Wordle-esque puzzles since March.
Like the viral online phenom Wordle, each LinkedIn game can
only be played once per day. However, users can invite their first-degree
connections to play together and optionally share their game stats like
completion status and scores.
While social gaming elements are still being refined,
LinkedIn sees the new games as a casual way to strengthen existing network
ties.
"It's hard for people to stay in touch, and games
provide a way to build those bonds," explained Dan Roth, VP and
Editor-in-Chief of LinkedIn News - the division behind developing the games
independently from parent company Microsoft.
Aping Newspaper Game Strategies
More than just engaging timewasters, LinkedIn's gaming
initiative borrows from the playbooks of major news publishers successfully
using puzzles to drive audience growth and retention.
The New York Times' suite of word games and crosswords has
attracted millions of loyal puzzle fanatics, seamlessly converting them into
wider content audiences. As media companies grapple with younger user losses to
TikTok and Instagram, games have emerged as an engagement secret weapon.
With over 1 billion users itself, LinkedIn is now emulating
that model to expand dwell time on the platform beyond just job searching and
recruiting. Like newspapers, it also operates an ads business and subscriber
paywall that benefit from stickier gaming hooks.
"Games provide a more casual way to knit existing
LinkedIn connections closer together," stated Roth.
A Trifecta of Puzzlers
So what do the three new LinkedIn games entail?
Queens tasks players with arranging crowns into
non-overlapping patterns against the clock in a Sudoku-inspired logic test.
Uniquely, users' company affiliations are displayed on leaderboards.
Crossclimb is a trivia game where subsequent word clues
change by a single letter, creating a new word with each correct guess.
Finally, Pinpoint challenges word skills by having users
identify connections between partially revealed words using as few letter
reveals as possible - a familiar concept to NYT's "Connections" fans.
While some workplaces frown upon time-wasting games, the
LinkedIn team believes self-contained daily play sessions should avert major
productivity drains.
"They're intended to be contained, because we don't
want people wasting time," said Laura Lorenzetti, LinkedIn's North America
Executive Editor. "That's not what we're here for."
From Meta's Fading Gaming Pivot to LinkedIn's Play
LinkedIn's gaming embrace may seem like familiar territory
after Meta's own ill-fated foray into social games. However, the platform's
professional networking roots could give it a unique edge.
Where Facebook Gaming struggled to retain casual gamers,
LinkedIn is banking on its ingrained use case - keeping working professionals
actively engaged and networked. Games provide low-friction social hooks
complementing that core purpose.
As Meta and others now pivot to mixed reality, LinkedIn
appears to be picking up the social gaming baton. By nestling simple sessions
within professionals' daily networking routines, it could uncover a new
frontier for sustained audience growth and monetization on the platform.
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