LinkedIn is making its new Stories feature available to users in Brazil, while it’s also added new settings and details in the main app as it prepares for a wider launch of the function.

As you can see here, LinkedIn Stories, which the company confirmed were coming back in February, look much the same as they do on Facebook and Instagram, with a Stories bar along the top of the screen, and various stickers and tools available to decorate your Stories frames.

There’s also now more detail on Stories within the LinkedIn Help pages, including an overview, and FAQ documentation, which outlines more details about how the option works.

Some relevant notes:

• Stories creation will only be available on mobile at launch
• The maximum length of a video in a Story is 20 seconds
• Stories will last for 24 hours, but users will be able to save individual Stories frames
• Users will be able to share their Story directly with another LinkedIn member via message
• Users will also be able to share other people’s Stories via message
• Stories viewers will be able to message the Story creator direct from a Stories frame – though users will not be able to message company pages from Stories, at least in the initial launch phase
• Users will be able to control what profile information they display in a Stories viewer list via their settings (example below via Ashwini Dodani/Matt Navarra) 

According to reports, LinkedIn announced in mid-April that Stories would be first rolled out to users in Brazil “over the next few weeks”. It seems that not all Brazilian users have access to the option as yet, but the access pool is being expanded over time. 

The announcement of LinkedIn Stories has already seen a lot of criticism, but the introduction of the option makes sense. Broader engagement data shows that Stories is increasingly how the next generation of social media users are communicating, in preference to the traditional News Feed, and as such, leaning into the evolving trend, across all platforms, looks to make more and more sense.

It may seem out of place on LinkedIn, where professional conversation is the focus, but the presentation looks good, and it could well provide another option for LinkedIn to further boost the ‘record levels of engagement‘ that it’s currently seeing. 

As noted, LinkedIn says that the function is currently only available in Brazil, but we’ll keep you updated on any progress.