LinkedIn Messaging Strategy: Spin Off a Standalone App or Keep It In the Main App
Company: LinkedIn
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Imagine you are the VP who owns messaging at LinkedIn. Today, members send and read messages inside the main LinkedIn app. How would you decide whether messaging should become its own standalone app or stay integrated in the main app as it is now?
```hint Weigh both sides of the split
Separate what members would gain from a dedicated messaging app from what LinkedIn's main experience and its businesses would gain or lose if conversations left the main app. Then ask what evidence would tell you which side is larger.
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### Clarifying Questions
- What prompted the question: falling messaging engagement, a competitor, complaints that the main app is cluttered, or a push to grow time spent?
- Which conversations are in scope: member-to-member messages only, or also paid recruiter and sales outreach and the sponsored messages advertisers place in the inbox?
- Would a standalone app replace messaging in the main app, so members must install it to read their messages, or sit alongside it as an option?
- Is this a mobile decision only, or would messaging on the desktop website change too?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear statement of what messaging does for members and for LinkedIn (professional outcomes, visits to the main app, paid messaging products) and the goal the decision should serve.
- Segmenting messaging users, such as occasional networkers, job seekers, recruiters and sales professionals, and how their frequency and needs differ.
- Explicit decision criteria, such as frequency of use, dependence on profile and job context, reach and reply rates, effect on the main app and revenue, and the cost of running two apps, weighed against each other.
- The evidence and low-risk tests that would settle the question, with a success metric and guardrails.
- A clear recommendation, the conditions that would change it, and lessons from comparable cases of messaging being split out of a main app or folded back in.
### Follow-up Questions
- Suppose the data shows that a small group of recruiters and sales users sends most messages. Does that change your answer, and how?
- If you did launch a standalone app, how would you move members to it without hurting reply rates during the transition?
- How would you tell whether keeping messaging inside the main app is holding its growth back?
Overview: A product strategy question for LinkedIn: as the executive responsible for messaging, decide whether it should become a standalone app or stay inside the main LinkedIn app. It tests framing the goal, segmenting messaging users, setting decision criteria, choosing evidence and metrics, and making a clear, conditional call.