Post-Mortem of LinkedIn Stories: Diagnosing the Failure and Redesigning the Launch

Treat LinkedIn Stories as a product that failed. If you had been its product manager, what would you have done differently? ```hint Diagnose before you fix Compare how often and why members open LinkedIn with what a short-lived, casual format assumes about its users. Each change you propose should answer a specific cause from that comparison. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should I improve the version that launched, or am I free to revisit the original decision to build Stories at all? - What was Stories meant to achieve: more posting from members who rarely post, more frequent visits, or a lighter way for companies and creators to share updates? - Was the failure low adoption by posters, low viewing, or both, or is diagnosing that part of the question? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A diagnosis tied to how members actually use LinkedIn, rather than a generic "it was a copy of other apps" - The member problem Stories should have solved, and for which segment - Specific changes across discovery, product design, launch and measurement, each linked to a failure cause - Success and kill criteria that would have exposed the problem earlier and at lower cost - What could be salvaged, and how the learnings carry into other content formats ### Follow-up Questions - If leadership insisted on shipping a Stories-style format anyway, how would you scope the first test to learn the most at the lowest risk? - Which members do you think would have used short-lived content most, and how would you test that? - How do you decide when to shut a feature down rather than keep iterating?