LinkedIn Retires Celebratory Post Templates

LinkedIn has announced that it’s removing a range of its templated posts, those celebratory post types in the app that include lightly animated graphics of varying kinds.

These are the templates that are being removed, as per a message being sent out to LinkedIn members who have used these specific templates in the past.

And it looks like almost all of them are getting cut, based on the current template options I have in the app:

Of these, only the confetti one looks set to remain, so LinkedIn’s seemingly moving away from this graphic style for its posts.

As per the message being sent to users (via Ahmed Ghanem):

“We are removing a handful of infrequently used templates, like Appreciation, Welcome and Skill Assessment Badge. Remember, even with these changes, you can still celebrate new teammates and professional accomplishments of all types with your own text, images and videos.”

Oh, how nice, LinkedIn’s giving you permission to keep posting to its platform, so it can continue to monetize your content.

Jokes aside, this seems like a relatively minor change, which is likely designed to get more users posting original content to the app. And those graphics do look a bit outdated, so maybe, this is a positive update for the professional social app, which will remove some of the generic visuals from your feed.

Some people probably really like this art style and presentation, so for them, it could be a blow. But again, with LinkedIn putting more emphasis on video, the impetus is likely to get more users sharing more of their own original images to accompany their updates, including videos.

Also, given LinkedIn’s enthusiasm for generative AI, it’s probably working on a new option that will enable you to generate your own post backgrounds for these types of announcements.

Which should look just as good, with distorted cartoon images and extra fingers all round for your big updates.

No word on this yet, but I’m guessing that’s what’s coming next on this front.