LinkedIn Starts Building a Syndicated Content Network ⇥ recode.net

Peter Kafka, Recode:

LinkedIn is emailing the 500 people it calls its “Influencers” and asking them for permission to automatically hand their stuff to other sites that want to republish it in full. Sites like Quartz routinely publish LinkedIn posts, but right now each article has to be manually approved by the author, which makes it a multistep process.

There’s no money trading hands here — Influencers write for LinkedIn for free, and LinkedIn lets other sites use those posts for free — but there’s still an obvious value exchange: Influencers get more distribution for their names and ideas, along with the notion that LinkedIn says they are “influencers.” And LinkedIn gets to advertise LinkedIn.

From the email LinkedIn sent to “Influencers”:

Your posts may appear in top-tier English publications such as the The Economist, New York Times, Quartz, TechCrunch, etc., always with attribution and links back to your original post.

In what universe is TechCrunch considered a “top-tier” publication, especially when listed alongside the Economist?

Then again, in what universe does the Economist need to farm content — not writing and not stories, but content — from freaking LinkedIn?