LinkedIn should be kept as a professional network and not turned into a new version of Facebook by its members, the UK boss of the social media site has said.

Speaking on an up-coming episode of City AM‘s Boardroom Uncovered podcast, country manager Janine Chamberlin said that while there has been a lot of new members joining in recent years, the core purpose of LinkedIn should remain the same.

Members posting personal updates on the Microsoft-owned site is a common complaint – something that Chamberlin partly puts down to habits picked up during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chamberlin, who originally hails from the Netherlands, has been at LinkedIn for more than 16 years, taking the top UK job in 2021 after rising the ranks.

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‘Lines have been blurred’ – LinkedIn

The UK boss of LinkedIn said: “When I joined back in 2008, we had less than 25m members on the platform. Now we have 1.2b so we have a lot of different industries represented.

“We have a lot of different functions represented there. And with that, you get people talking about different things for LinkedIn.

“For us, the identity is really clear. We are a professional network.

“But I think that what you can see is that over the last five years, we’ve had, of course, the whole episode of Covid, people working from home and some of the boundaries between what we do in our personal life and what we do in our professional lives, they have become a little bit more blurred.

“And there are things that maybe someone might interpret as a personal update, but it’s very much related to someone’s professional life or someone’s professional identity.

“And their space for that, LinkedIn. But there is no doubt in our minds, like LinkedIn is a professional network and we want to keep it that way.”