By Bisola David
LinkedIn’s Vice President of Product Management, Oscar Rodriguez, announced a new verification feature on Wednesday, stating that the firm thinks everyone on LinkedIn should have access to verification and that the service promises to be free to all users.
Rodriguez emphasized the importance of authenticity and claimed that a verified LinkedIn member will have more opportunities on the site.
“You’ll have an even better chance of discovering the professional possibilities that matter to you and your community on LinkedIn when you demonstrate that you’re the real you. For this reason, we introduced verification choices in October 2022, and we’re now introducing three more ways to confirm your identity and place of employment.”
He said that starting in the US, LinkedIn is collaborating with Clear, an encrypted identification platform to verify its members.
“Starting this month, you can indicate on your profile that you used Clear to confirm your identity. Just a U.S. government-issued ID and a U.S. phone number is required. This is how the experience will look, and if you need help getting set up, refer to our Help Center for instructions,” Rodriguez stated.
The business stated that given the professional nature of LinkedIn, it wants to make sure users can also verify their place of employment.
According to LinkedIn, users can use their company-issued email addresses to authenticate where they work. This feature is currently available to 50 million users worldwide.
While adding that there are over 4,000 companies, LinkedIn claimed this is one additional technique to demonstrate the validity of users’ accounts.
The eligibility for this product will be expanded over time as it is rolled out to more businesses.
LinkedIn said it is also teaming with Microsoft to offer enterprises access to the Microsoft Entra Verified ID platform to issue digital workplace IDs for free, enabling workers to display the verification on their LinkedIn profile.
“Rolling out at the end of April, we plan to make this available to dozens of participating companies reaching more than two million LinkedIn members. As more businesses join Entra, we’ll keep increasing availability,” LinkedIn VP stated.
Social media platforms are using user verification to engender trust and establish more confidence in the content being uploaded on their sites.
However, the attachment of price tags by sites like Twitter and Meta means that only a few people that can afford to pay monthly memberships can get verified.