LinkedIn Removes Activity Feed from Profile PageJoe Hertvik: Tech Machinist

***Note: since this article was originally printed, LinkedIn reinstated the ability to view individual activity feeds from user profile pages in May 2014. To read about how LinkedIn restored this ability, check out this article.***

***Original article from December 2013****

As of December 2013, LinkedIn removed the activity feed from your LinkedIn full profile page.

The activity feed allowed you and anyone viewing your full profile to see all your recent activity. It was a valuable feature because it was the only place on LinkedIn where your connections could go and see all your status updates, profile changes, posts to discussions, new connections, etc. in one place. As such, you could see what other people were up to and people could view your LinkedIn posts without a lot of hassle.

Here’s LinkedIn’s announcement about the removal.

With the Activity Feed removal, there is no other LinkedIn function for anyone to view all of these items for an individual user, except to search them out one at a time through the LinkedIn home page.

I contacted LinkedIn Help about the removal and they were ambiguous about why they removed the activity feed from the full user profile. Here’s the tweet they sent me explaining why they did it.

This is a rather ambiguous answer and doesn’t really explain why they felt they had to remove the feed or more importantly, what other better experiences LI users can expect now that the company no longer has to support the activity feed on user profiles.

Here’s what LinkedIn tweeted me when I asked whether there was a chance the feed would be added back in the future or whether LinkedIn would add another feature allowing users to see all the activity for an individual user.

So the end result is that LinkedIn’s profile page activity feed is gone. There are no settings you can tweak to put it back, and LinkedIn has no plans to return or replace this function in the future.

There is a partial fix to view only your LI profile’s activity feed. LinkedIn provides instructions for viewing your own (but not other users) activity feed in their announcement about the removal. I’ve also published the LinkedIn URL you can use for viewing your own activity feed and the shared updates and group postings of your connections (see below).

IMHO, this is a bad move on LinkedIn’s part and diminishes LinkedIn’s value to their users. If you also believe this was a bad move and would like to see this capability expanded or added back, I recommend contacting LinkedIn and complaining. They are diligent about monitoring the @LinkedInhelp and @LinkedIn and you are likely to get a response from @LinkedInhelp, if you contact them.