How to Fix the Critical Flaw with LinkedIn Pulse

Pulse is Unique and Great, but...

First, let me state that LinkedIn Pulse is an incredible forum and a wonderful tool in so many ways for so many types of people/businesses. The sheer success of Pulse measured by the number of posts, views, likes, and comments each day in such a wide arena of topics proves the value LinkedIn brings to the world of networking.

But, like all things initially attempted, there are improvements that must happen over time, particularly as Pulse is opened up more and more to the public.

How Pulse Currently Works

You get the wonderful little pen icon in your status update box and, hopefully, you take the time to write a well thought out article on a topic you're passionate about. Then you spend the next 2 hours trying to find a decent image for your article on Google that is actually labelled for reuse so you don't get sued! But seriously, you write your awesome post and hit publish.

It's then sent to your network and followers. The success of your article is now exclusively determined by how many views your article gets.

The Major Flaw

Your article's success is measured by how many views it gets, not by the actual quality of the article, as measured by likes. So in reality, quality articles are often buried behind those whose view count is higher.

Worst of all, this cycle is even more extreme and snowballs quickly because articles with higher views get bumped to the top of Pulse's Top Posts section, so those articles get even more views just out of the curious nature and lazy habits of people like myself. By the end of week, several of the top posts rack up +200,000 views, with many of them having less than 1,000 likes, or in other words, 0.5% of all people who viewed the article deemed it worthy of actually pressing the like button at the bottom. Pretty abysmal.

On the flip side, there are articles with a paltry +2,000 views at the end of the week, but some of them have +500 likes, meaning that 1 out of every 4 people who read it deemed it worthy of liking and sharing it with the rest of their network. Must have been a pretty good article!

So, the current system is not promoting articles with worthy content and great depth, but rather is kind of a popularity contest that often negatively builds over the week.

I have personally seen, as I'm sure you have too, articles with +250,000 views and around only 100 likes, and the handful of comments are just flaming the article/writer for a bad post.

That doesn't sound like a very effective system, does it? The goal should be to promote articles with quality content, right? So, how can this be fixed?

The Rather Stupidly Simple Answer

I highly, highly doubt I'm the first to suggest this, but I'm just too lazy to see if anyone else has, so please let me know in the comments so I can share and promote it for change.

If you've ever been to Reddit, you know next to every post there are two arrows. One points up, the other points down. I think you can figure out the rest. Over time, you'd be amazed just how efficient a community of people can be in promoting the best posts, comments, and ideas, while conversely demoting the bad ones. No reason such an elegant and easy solution can't be applied to Pulse.

For the Good of Everyone

With this critical change, posts that are actually worthy of reading start to rise up, regardless of whether the publisher has nurtured a following. Now, those willing to take the time to share valuable insight can reach the top of the charts. Now, a successful post can be measured by the response from the audience who gained from it's content. There must be a way to reward those who are getting an amazing number likes in comparison to views, rather than just on views alone.

Ironically, this post may never reach a larger audience for the very same flaw it argues within it, so help it out by getting others to view it. Otherwise, it will be trapped at the bottom of the viewing well along with other articles that may have been of benefit.

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I'm striving for a purpose beyond material things or self-interests, for excellence in actions, and in giving back to those in need. I want to see these things exemplified in the world of business, and I've made it a mission to strive for them with other like-minded people.

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