After agreeing to pay $13 million in a class action lawsuit over its excessive emailing, LinkedIn is emphasizing quality over quantity.
LinkedIn announced on the company blog that it's building a new tool, called Air Traffic Controller (ATC), designed to serve its users notifications more relevant to what they want to know. Since July, LinkedIn has cut email communications by 50%, but it promises that ATC will reduce that number further still.
With ATC, LinkedIn wants to be smarter about the notifications it sends its users across all platforms, including email, mobile and SMS. It will use algorithms to learn how users interact with LinkedIn which will determine what notifications users receive, how frequently they will receive them and where notifications will be sent.
In its blog post, the company claims that the use of ATC will bring an "immediate improvement to both the quantity and quality" of the notifications users will receive from LinkedIn.
This is a stark change of course from a company whose nagging "Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" invitation emails were so frequent, they became a meme, though one supposes a $13 million settlement will do that.
pic.twitter.com/9r6KdvoKPL— Frank Chimero (@frank_chimero) September 22, 2015
"We realize that a one-size-fits-all method doesn’t work. We want to give you emails and notifications based on what your prefer, not what’s best for us," said Erica Lockheimer, LinkedIn's director of engineering growth, in ATC's announcement blog.
While LinkedIn isn't clear on the specifics of ATC, it's definitely a final nail in the coffin for the never-ending stream of emails that previously flooded unsuspecting inboxes.