The majority of LinkedIn’s user interface is non-essential to its core product. It hurt my experience so much that I stopped using it… until recently when I took matters into my own hands.
The problem is what I call Bloat UX – poor ad placement and noisy growth content.
In an attempt to increase engagement – particularly with its own product – LinkedIn is blasting the front page with ads of all kind. But the industry isn’t calling them ads, and neither is their dev team. They call them…
<DIV class=”viral-entity” >
<DIV class=”content” >
Anything that isn’t core to the product is a distraction; it is fat that weighs down on users achieving their goals. I don’t need watered-down, sponsored content or a popular post that a lot of random people clicked on.
Cutting the fat
It’s surprisingly easy to cut away a site’s bloat.
I just used AdBlock for Chrome, then pointed out all the viral cards and growth content being disguised as functionality.