LinkedIn is planning to add a games section to its social media platform.
Evidence of the planned feature was first found by app researchers, with images shared by Nima Owji revealing in-app titles named Blueprint, Crossclimb, and Queens. The idea is that companies will be ranked on leaderboards based on their collective employees’ scores.
LinkedIn’s planned games look to be simple, short games which can be completed in a few minutes, similar to The New York Times’ Wordle or Connections. Going off the images alone, Queens looks like Picross with an extra constraint added, while Blueprint looks like a simpler version of the first round in Only Connect where you need to guess what connects a number of clues.
Following the games’ discovery, LinkedIn has now officially confirmed a games section is in the works (thanks, TechCrunch).
“We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” a LinkedIn spokesperson stated. (The images shared by Owji are not the latest versions, the spokesperson added.)
LinkedIn’s spokesperson declined to comment on whether its parent company Microsoft was involved with the games feature. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2bn, which made it Microsoft’s largest acquisition until its $68.7bn deal to buy Activision Blizzard.