My former boss, Brian Balfour, popped up in my email this morning.

No, it wasn’t an invite back to work at Reforge.

(I’m not available anyway. 😉)

Rather, it was one of his signature long-form essays on a complex tech trend.

He hasn’t put one out in a while, but these broad-and-specific teardowns are the type of content that drew me to work for him back in 2021.

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​His piece today is about ‘distribution shifts’ — or perhaps more plainly, the cycle of platform growth, monetization, and monopolization.

Brian describes the repeated cycle of:

• finding a moat
• pulling in a critical mass of users
• then closing the doors for control

He describes how we’ve seen this time an again

Google, Facebook, Apple, and now OpenAI and the other LLMs.

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But perhaps most interestingly for you, is Brian’s recap of this cycle for LinkedIn.

Yes, we all hem and haw over seemingly daily shifts in the algorithm that impact our engagement and reach.

But Brian’s lens on this goes into how LinkedIn’s aggressive platform changes are not only happening in real-time — they’re happening faster than ever.

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While Google took decades to build its critical mass, LinkedIn, in just ~3 years managed to pull B2Bs away from Twitter and blogs and into a faux-Garden of Eden of idea exchange and commerce-matching.

And now? The other shoe is dropping.

Sponsored content is spiking

Organic reach is plummeting.

And the full-court monetization press is on.

Brian even notes LI is now "gaslighting the community" by claiming algo updates are about quality.

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My interpretation: if you’re waiting for LinkedIn to get “better” or even revert to the seemingly easy-ROI platform of yesteryear, you might be waiting for…ever.

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If you have a good 20 minutes (yes, it’s a refreshingly long and deep read!) check out the full piece on Brian’s Substack, including his predictions on the AI race.

And if you’re just interested in the LinkedIn part, it’s about two-thirds of the way down.

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💡

-Wes