LinkedIn shipped seven features in one announcement and then explained exactly who they were for. Not recruiters. Not job seekers. People running something on the side.

The company announced the package on 15 October under the headline "New Ways to Build Meaningful Connections, Grow Your Side Hustle, and Earn on LinkedIn," citing a 70% rise in members adding "founder" to profiles and a 26% increase since 2019 in members reporting more than one position. Trade coverage caught up on 21 October.

If you are a coach who has spent three years building a LinkedIn pipeline, the headline feature is not the money tools. It's the feed.

Two feeds, two lotteries

LinkedIn is testing a dedicated Network feed that surfaces posts only from a member's connections and the people they follow, rather than the broader algorithmic feed. Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan announced the trial of the Network tab, an alternative feed made up entirely of content from people a member has explicitly connected with or followed.

The test runs in four countries — the United States, India, the United Kingdom and Australia — and LinkedIn has not published a schedule for when every eligible member in those markets will see it. Independent change-log trackers still list the Network tab as a trial rather than a confirmed release.

Here's why that matters commercially. Until now there was one distribution event. You posted, the algorithm decided, and reach was reach. Split the feed and your 8,000 followers and your 600 actual connections stop being the same audience arriving through the same door.

The discovery feed rewards topic authority and strangers who stop scrolling. A connections feed rewards the people who already know you — which is where most coaching revenue actually comes from, and where almost nobody optimises, because for years there was no reason to.

The number everyone is repeating

The 70% figure is doing a lot of work in the coverage, and it deserves a closer look. The 26% figure has a stated baseline year. The 70% founder figure does not: no starting date, no definition of a founder, no absolute count. Several outlets reported it as growth over the last year, but it remains LinkedIn's internal data, published by LinkedIn, to justify a LinkedIn product line.

Use it as a signal of intent, not a market-size estimate.

The part that competes with you

Advice Sessions lets eligible members sell one-to-one video consultations directly from their profile, with booking and payment handled inside LinkedIn. It's live now for Business Premium subscribers in the U.S., with more markets to follow. LinkedIn says it won't take a cut of what members earn from those sessions.

Read that again as a coach. The paid intro call — the thing you built a funnel, a landing page, a Calendly and a Stripe account to sell — is now a button on a profile. Free to list. No commission. Available to every consultant, fractional exec and moonlighting director in the country.

More than 80% of LinkedIn creators build content alongside another role, the company said, framing the new tools around that audience. One analysis called it fiscal infrastructure for the creator middle class: people with expertise, an audience and a day job.

That is your buyer pool and your competitor set, arriving in the same release notes.

What's actually confirmed

The consolidated creator dashboard, reached from the mobile profile menu, rolls out globally in the coming weeks. In-Stream Ads, which pay eligible creators when pre-roll ads run on their video, is limited to select U.S. creators and advertisers. LinkedIn has not said what share it keeps, nor published eligibility thresholds, payment timing or brand safety controls.

So: dashboard confirmed, consultations live in one market, video money invite-only and opaque, feed split still a test in four countries.

The test is the one to watch. Everything else is a feature. A second feed is a second set of rules, and the coaches who figure out what a connections-only feed rewards will be doing it before LinkedIn has finished deciding whether to keep it.