It seems that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing.

Following Twitter’s decision to abandon its social stories project ‘Fleets’ last month, LinkedIn is now also moving away from its LinkedIn Stories experiment.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“We introduced Stories last year as a fun and casual way to share quick video updates. We've learned a ton. Now, we're taking those learnings to evolve the Stories format into a reimagined video experience across LinkedIn that’s even richer and more conversational. We want to embrace mixed media and creative tools of Stories in a consistent way across our platform, while working to integrate it more tightly with your professional identity.”

As a result of this, LinkedIn Stories, in its current form, will be removed at the end of September. 

LinkedIn is also sending this notification out to Page Admins:

Among its key learnings from its year-and-a-bit old Stories project, LinkedIn says user response has shown that:

• Users want their Stories-like content to live on beyond the 24 hour window, and be available on their profile
• Users want more creative tools to make engaging videos across the platform

As a result, LinkedIn will incorporate these two elements into its next video project, which it will now develop in replacement of the Stories product.

LinkedIn hasn’t provided any details beyond that, but with its acquisition of how-to video platform Jumprope earlier this month, it seems likely that LinkedIn will be looking to develop more professional showcase video tools for user profiles, providing another way to present quick insights, skills pointers and more, in a more creative, engaging way.

Really, it’s probably no big surprise that LinkedIn Stories hasn’t worked out. Most experiments with the option showed limited reach and click-through rates, and in recent months, LinkedIn seemed to be getting increasingly desperate to boost Stories views, even trying out themed Stories curated by LinkedIn’s team to fill people’s top-of-feed Stories bar.

Still, some people would have found it useful, valuable addition, and its removal will cause a re-think of their LinkedIn outreach strategy. LinkedIn also currently offers Stories ads, which further expands the impact to paid tools, another strategic consideration.

Does that mean that people have had enough of the Stories format in general? Likely not. Instagram Stories remains hugely popular, and Stories on Snapchat still appear to be gaining traction. But it does seem like there is a limit to how much people want to see certain formats, while there was always a question of fit for the option on both Twitter and LinkedIn.

Still, it was likely worth the experiment, as now LinkedIn can know, for sure, that Stories is not the way to go, while it’ll also enable it to re-focus on the elements that did work with the option.

So, another Stories option down, and one less consideration in your strategic planning. Which is likely helplful for some social media managers – but based on what we know, I would be considering what kinds of how-to videos you might be able to create to help promote your business and personal brand on LinkedIn, as that seems to be the next, replacement innovation on the way.