LinkedIn is retiring LinkedIn Signal. Here’s the email I just received from LinkedIn detailing the discontinuation of LinkedIn Signal:
Hi Donna,
The LinkedIn team is continually working to improve your everyday experience across LinkedIn by adding more useful products and features for members like you. Sometimes, this means we will fold a feature into another product or retire it completely in an effort to focus our resources on creating better tools and experiences.
On July 29, we will be retiring LinkedIn Signal. While you will still be able to look for people, companies, groups, jobs, and keywords using search, you’ll no longer be able to search for updates or access any saved Signal searches after this date.
If you’d like more information on the LinkedIn Signal retirement, please visit our Help Center.
Thanks for being a LinkedIn member,
The LinkedIn Team
LinkedIn has discontinued a bunch of features over the last year. Just when you thought they were at their core product, they decide to discontinue LinkedIn Signal. LinkedIn Signal was billed as a “product that gives you a whole new way to consume information and news that’s most relevant to you as a professional. Signal is the first of many LinkedIn products aimed at making it really easy for all professionals to glean only the most relevant insights from the never-ending stream of status updates and news. In other words, Signal allows all professionals to make sense of the noise that surrounds them today.” via LinkedIn Blog
The five key features of LinkedIn Signal were:
1. Filtering of Status Updates
2. Status Update Keyword Search
3. Updated real-time stream of status updates with rich content
4. List of trending links across any relevant topic
5. Ability to see who’s shared different links AND saved real time searches
via LinkedIn Blog
The people who used Signal used it for finding job postings that recruiters broadcast via status updates. The thing is, very few people knew LinkedIn Signal existed. It was a great tool but it wasn’t a front and center feature of LinkedIn and it got lost in the noise it was supposed to prevent.
LinkedIn will tell you that they are “continually working on developing more useful products and features for members” and this means they sometimes have to remove products to make way for newer and better ones.
I can’t help but wonder if LinkedIn realized that LinkedIn Signal was used by job seekers and was eating into revenue they could be receiving via their Jobs Center. Who knows! Perhaps I am just a wee bit cynical.
Here’s the thing: Don’t be too sad. Just because LinkedIn Signal is gone, you can still search for people, companies, keywords and jobs directly from LinkedIn’s homepage using the search bar. You just can’t search updates. But who knows, we may see that feature turn up in a future update.
Are you sad that LinkedIn Signal is being retired? How did you use? Let me know in the comments! Scroll down…
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I made good fortune through Signal…Almost 1/5 million last year, I was selling the leads generated through Signal…
Yeah, I was afraid this day would come. A significant part of my success generating revenue using social media over the past 7 years has been me actively searching out people in need of professional services, primarily using advanced search, alerts. LinkedIn will typically yield a 6-figure score in new client revenue for me every year. Lot’s of business owners have been helped through my firm(s)’ services. When LinkedIn Answers was discontinued last year or so, that impacted my LinkedIn lead generation significantly. So I bit the bullet and was thankful I still could search “status updates” across LinkedIn. I would search by trigger phrases, keywords, pain points and people asking for referrals and recommendations for tax advisors, consultants, etc (bottom of the sales funnel stuff). This was also a big source of revenue for me. Well now LinkedIn has discontinued that option for everyone as well. LinkedIn Signal, which was the feature that allow the searching of status updates has been discontinued this week. As a business developer, LinkedIn is quickly squeezing me off of their platform, conveniently pushing me more towards their paid ads. I know there is more to LinkedIn and social media than what I’ve mentioned here, I really do, but monitoring has been the #1 tool for me when it comes to lead gen.
Yes, Linkedin “Updates Search” was pretty useful in searching for relevant discussions, opportunities etc using respective phrases. Without this features, the major benefit of linkedin is gone for me 🙁
Hi
I agree with all the comments above, being able to search through Status Updates for keywords that prospective clients were likely to use resulted in new business for me.
I also used it to search for updates from 1st degree connections, because you often miss these when there is a contact stream of new comments, news etc etc appearing in home page.
Removing Signal and Answers recently has certainly devalued LinkedIn from an advanced user point of view. But maybe LinkedIn have something new up their sleeve or as one reader above points out they want to drive advanced users to pay for the additional functionality.
Julian
It was the best tool for people in business development role. I made a good fortune with this tool. I am very unhappy with this move of LinkedIn. It was the best feature of LinkedIn. I wish they could bring it back.
Hi Kushal!
Perhaps LinkedIn will bring it back bundled in with one of their premium plans.
-_Donna
Signal is back!!! Salestools.io has created a simple version that works check https://salestools.io/newsmonitor/
Just wondering if you have come across anything else then LinkedIn signals? Just took a very old course and then showed you how to use it but it seems it just exist anymore.