Facebook Is Launching a Career-Development Site, Taking on LinkedIn

Little by little, Facebook is starting to sound a lot more like LinkedIn.

In February, the social network announced a new feature that lets users browse and apply for jobs on the site. In August, it unveiled a new system to help members of Facebook groups find a mentor or mentee within the group. And Wednesday, it announced the launch of Learn With Facebook, an education portal that directly competes with LinkedIn Learning.

“As people embark on and continue their career journey, our hope is that these free resources can give them the support they need to advance in today’s digital economy,” the company wrote in a blog post. Facebook also no doubt hopes these features will make the site more useful.

Last quarter, Facebook saw user growth stagnate in the U.S./Canada and decline in Europe. In addition to driving attention to Facebook’s other jobs-related resources, the new career development site is designed to give people another reason to visit the social network, beyond mindlessly scrolling through engagement photos and updates from old classmates.

On Learn with Facebook, industry experts offer modules on a variety of work-related topics, like “Ace Your Interview” or “Manage Your Content Marketing.” Unlike similar e-learning platforms from companies such as Fiverr and Udemy, the courses are all free. Alongside the courses, however, you can already see suggested job postings—and Jobs on Facebook is a service for which Facebook encourages businesses to pay to promote their listings.

All of these new releases ladder up to Facebook’s bigger mission to train 1 million U.S. business owners in digital skills by 2020. If Facebook makes some ad revenue or collects better professional data in the process, it’ll be an intended consequence.