I had read rumours and LinkedIn has now confirmed it – the relationship section of the profile is no longer available. Screenshot of their update below.
Though their explanation is that they are “always looking for ways to simplify and improve your experience” and that it wasn’t that well used, I feel that LinkedIn never really actually got behind and promoted this feature to begin with. I loved it from the start and showed examples in the Zestee Social Media School, however it didn’t seem to be consistently available on all profiles, and also quite “buggy” for me at times.
If they were instead shifting this to being a LinkedIn Premium feature and dedicating time and resources to getting it working properly, this is something I would absolutely pay (a reasonable amount as in less than US10 a month) for. After many years, I am still searching for a simple, affordable CRM for entrepreneurs and to me, it makes perfect sense to combine this within the world’s largest social media platform.
I was a very early LinkedIn user and it’s still one of my favourite platforms, but I still feel it is running at so much under its potential and that they aren’t transparent enough about their pricing, or offering enough value for a paid account. I’ve been offered a “free premium trial” on many occasions, but I always want to know BEFORE I sign up for a free trial what the cost after the trial is and LinkedIn doesn’t make that easy to find:
I’m hesitant to click on “career” as I have no idea if that will “switch” me over already or give me another step where I get to actually see pricing. From some googling I think its’ around USD24.99 per month and there is no way I would get value from that. I think they are totally missing an entire market in these 4 categories: building & maintaining relationships. I am simultaneously an entrepreneur, student and employee. The closest fit for me here is “career” but I’m not at all looking to get in touch with hiring managers, compare myself to other applicants. What I would really like to do is what the relationship section ALMOST offered – continue to connect with others in a business sense and build and maintain relationships. I’m interested in “learning new skills to advance your career” as they say here, but already doing this outside of LinkedIn – I’m wondering if they are including a subscription to the LinkedIn Learning here, though they don’t make it clear. That launched last year and I signed up for the free week but never actually got around to using it.
LinkedIn also push the fact that premium can “help you find and connect with the right people”. I do this already in “real life” but want to manage and maintain those relationships on LinkedIn. Without the relationship section, this will be even more difficult. Pity.
Did you use the relationship section on LinkedIn? If so, will you miss it? And have you used the Premium LinkedIn Services? Find them useful? Please comment below!
Renee
Zestee 
Thanks for the heads-up Renée! I am so going to miss this useful feature. It helps me to remember where and when I met a contact. Also, I am going to miss the tags and the chat history. I am reluctant as well to try the paid features of LinkedIn.
Yes, same! I have made notes about when and where I met people. Hopefully the chat history will stay to some extent in the messaging section. I have already tried to message people before/after we have met (at an event for example) to say things like “I see we are both speaking at this event” or “it was lovely to meet you at TEDxAmsterdam” so I guess this is one alternative. But whether or not the LinkedIn messaging will group all previous messages with that one person or not isn’t clear, I’ll need to look into that. Renee