Welcome to The FoLD!

This week’s hot takes…

On LinkedIn & Personal Branding

Linkedin is testing tabs at the top of your feed that allow you to filter your feed experience by only showing you the posts of people you connect with or follow vs. the default “all” experience, which I assume replicates the “Top” feed experience that’s been the default for years.

The test will run for just 5 weeks.

Anyone have tabs at the top of your feed instead of the “Top” vs “Recent” filter?

I’d love to see a screenshot…

2) Linkedin is rolling out comment impression counts!

Post impressions have been steadily decreasing over time (see my stats below - the jump from 2022 to 2024 has been ROUGH!) and it appears they're looking for other ways for us to scratch that dopamine itch.

As explained by LinkedIn:
“You can now see how many impressions your comments have received to gain insights on the impact within your LinkedIn community. A comment impression is counted each time someone views your comment. This count is non-unique, if the same member views a comment twice, it is counted as two comment impressions. Your own views are also counted towards the impression count.”

If you've followed me for a while, you've likely heard two things:

1) Impressions are the least important metric on the platform because we have so little control over them.

2) Commenting is one of the most important ways to grow your personal brand on Linkedin.

So this is very intriguing to me.

I think it's a really interesting way to incentivize people to jump into conversations & comment on the platform more.

Which is likely necessary since less than 10% of people reportedly publish posts on a regular basis.

The one glaring issue I see is:

”Your own views are also counted towards the impression count"

Why? That seems so silly to me.

Regardless, I think it's great to see Linkedin continuing to release new features, especially as part of analytics, which is sorely lacking here compared to other social platforms.

On 🤖 AI & Business Innovation

The battle for world AI domination between Anthropic (parent company of Claude), OpenAI, and Perplexity continues to rage on, with each of these three popular horses jockeying for the crown.

This week, saw Perplexity & OpenAI bringing Deep Research capabilities to the forefront, granting access to even free users of their respective tools.

I’ve tested both and OpenAI’s Deep Research blew Perplexity’s results away. It delivers ridiculously detailed, well-structured results—perfect for anyone who actually needs high-quality insights. Like having a PhD on your computer.

Perplexity also announced that it is launching Comet: A Browser for Agentic Search. No idea what that means, but presumably it involves freeing up our time by encouraging us to let Perplexity do all of our searching in the background while we are off doing more productive things.

And not to be outdone, Anthropic dropped Sonnet 3.7, it’s most advanced model ever featuring a hybrid reasoning model that combines rapid responses with deep, reflective thinking in a single system. It’s said to be ideal for coding, complex problem-solving, automation, and workflow execution. Accessible via Anthropic’s API.

I have to say that I find all of this competition to be fascinating. If there was a reality TV show about this, I’d definitely watch it!

On Curiosity…

🗳️ANY DAY IS A GOOD DAY FOR A POLL!🗳️

Seems like everyone is a coach these days, but not everyone has coaching credentials or certifications, which got me thinking: do coaching certifications matter?

Doesn’t look like it does to most people…

And I randomly polled my network to settle a debate between me and Megan Bailey Darmody: are chip clips necessary or can you get away with folding chip bags & lock in freshness?

As a result, the vast majority of my network apparently thinks I’m a heathen…

Speaking of heathens…

Check out this exchange that perfectly encapsulates the difference between Linkedin & X…

Linkedin is becoming increasingly more political in 2025 and it doesn’t appear that trend is going to die down anytime soon.

🌶️ On Hot Sauce…

🔥 This Week’s #ScovilleSunday review featured:

Il Mig Onima Habanero, Sherry & Koji (Barcelona, Spain)

First impressions:

Funky, sweet, and fiery (in a very good way)

Flavor Profile:

• Habanero: Brings the heat.
• Koji: adds deep umami, like miso or soy sauce.
• Sherry: A touch of sweetness to balance it out.

Heat level:

Slow burn, lingers, but doesn’t destroy you.

Eat it on:

Grilled meats, roasted veggies, oysters.

🥤 Or through a straw… 🤪

Would I buy it again? 100% YES.

This one is going straight into my regular rotation.

Tried it? Let me know. Haven’t? Fix that.