LinkedIn calls time on ephemeral Stories

LinkedIn is removing its ephemeral Stories feature at the end of the month—two months after Twitter did the same. Neither companies were able to gain traction with the disappearing video format, which was pioneered by Snapchat and has become hugely popular on Instagram.

LinkedIn viewed the Stories format as an avenue to bring "lightweight conversations" about work to the professional network. It rolled out Stories globally in October last year, offering users the ability to share photos and videos up to 20 seconds in length, that would be viewable in a tab at the top of the feed for 24 hours.

But it turns out ephemerality and professional networking do not go hand-in-hand. In a post published on Tuesday (August 31), LinkedIn senior director of product Liz Li said users instead want videos that can live on their profile, not disappear.

"In developing Stories, we assumed people wouldn’t want informal videos attached to their profile, and that ephemerality would reduce barriers that people feel about posting. Turns out, you want to create lasting videos that tell your professional story in a more personal way and that showcase both your personality and expertise," Li wrote.

LinkedIn will sunset Stories by the end of the September, and said it will take learnings from the format to create a new video experience on its platform.

"We want to embrace mixed media and creative tools of Stories in a consistent way across our platform, while working to integrate it more tightly with your professional identity," Li wrote.

As well as permanency, LinkedIn said it will work on adding more creative tools to videos, beyond stickers and 'The Question of the Day' prompts it provided in Stories.