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Have you checked your Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter lately? If so, you have probably seen that video is dominating social media nowadays. Not only are video based features fun for users to watch and share, they also increase the amount of time people spend on these platforms, as well as drive more video-based advertising, tapping into those premium ad dollars.

With video being such a huge growth engine for these companies, its no wonder LinkedIn followed suit. As it’s first major new feature since its acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn recently unveiled its Quara-style Q&A videos that are created by users and hosted by LinkedIn itself.

Rolling out this new feature to a select group of LinkedIn Influencers, the videos will be short (30 seconds or less) responses to questions aimed to them specifically or to the community at large. Since LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform, questions will most likely focus on leadership challenges and the impact of general trends in the business world. A few examples are “What is the first thing in your office that Artificial Intelligence will take over?” and “What is the #1 thing Founders should avoid doing in a pitch meeting?” Following the video response, a carousel of additional Influencer responses to the same question appears, allowing the listener to hear a plethora of opinions from LinkedIn users they value.

You can check out some examples from Guy Kawasaki, edX CEO Anant Agarwal, and LinkedIn’s Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman. Here’s Kawasaki’s video:

Video features are not an entirely new addition to LinkedIn. Jasper Sherman-Presser, a Product Manager at LinkedIn, says that video is already a fairly popular medium on the site with users uploading videos to their personal profiles. However, until now, videos on LinkedIn previously linked to other websites such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Sherman-Presser indicates that LinkedIn will eventually open video creation to more users in the future, great news for those of us who have not quite reached LinkedIn Influencer status yet! In my eyes, LinkedIn’s video feature will be a one-of-a-kind tool for users to build their personal brand, create unique content, and become a thought leader within their industry.

Written by: Emilie Kruger, EveryoneLinked