We thought maybe all the editors had gone on vacation together, so we gave them a few days to enjoy the sun. And to have their pina coladas. But when nothing happened for more than a week - meaning, none of “Today’s Top SlideShares” and “Featured SlideShares” changed (a situation that haven't changed since, as can see from above - we sent them a query.

We started on a friendly note, “Hey”, explained our interest in the homepage “We are aiming to be featured on it”, mentioned that “we’ve noticed that there haven’t been any changes to the homepage” and wondered “Do we need to look for another place to publish it?”

We got this in response:

There’s a lot going on here.

First, it confirmed that the homepage is indeed edited by human experts who handpick the decks to be featured. Jolly. But it didn’t refer to our query in regards to the lack of activity we’d flagged. That’s never a good sign, when you get a reply that dodges your question.

And there’s this sentence “They are most picked from upcoming viral content.” which doesn’t make any sense on any level. Has SlideShare (or parent company LinkedIn (or parent company Microsoft)) developed a predictive tool that can recognize in advance content that is destined to be viral?

Being a smarty-pants aside, the SlideShare rep included actionables that validated some of the information we gathered from around the web: that we need to share it on social networks and accumulate views in order to get noticed.

The whole exchange left us feeling sweet-and-sour; something was definitely fishy with SlideShare, but hands were still on deck. More than that, they explicitly encouraged us to move forward with our deck and gave us a few pointers on how to get featured on their homepage.

The Lights Are On But No One’s Home

Yeah, totally. We eventually uploaded with a heavy heart and to our obvious disappointment, we didn’t get featured on the homepage. If it’s any consolation, nobody did. Actually, that’s not true. The lucky few that happened to be parked in the homepage at the right time won a lifetime exposure.

Looking at the glass half full, that was an awesome experience for us. We met cool visual folks from all over, we put together a truly kicking piece of content, got decent exposure and nods from folks in our space.

Not sure if it’s still relevant, but the traffic coming from SlideShare is strong, focused and determined. All the numbers are through the roof with this audience: Pages per Session is tripled, Session Duration is X5 , Bounce Rate significantly reduced and the average conversion rate has reached a whopping 50%, which is insane. One can only dream for this kind of audience on a regular basis.

Still, not sure what the what is up with SlideShare. One of two things. Either the very human and expert editors of the homepage haven’t found a single, decent, worthy-of-the-homepage deck in more than two months now. That is a possibility. A deck creativity dry spell is sweeping through the marketing world; these things happen.

The other possibility is that SlideShare / LinkedIn / Microsoft is not telling us something. Without gliding into conspiracy theory territory (extremist liberals have planted subliminal code in the homepage) it is safe to say that business is not as usual. Somebody higher up the chain might have decided that the SlideShare thing is just not worth it, that it is impossible to monetize and so it is an unnecessary burden on LinkedIn; a dead weight that’s pulling it down.

That’s a totally valid argument and if Microsoft had announced it had decided to pull the plug on SlideShare we believe the earth would continue spinning; Microsoft has pulled the plug on enough projects, it knows the drill.

SlideShare is Misleading its Audience

This we’re in/we’re out attitude of deciding not to decide is far from cool. SlideShare is misleading its audience. Companies put a lot of effort into creating these decks in the hopes of getting back views, which equals to brand exposure, which leads to leads. It is a matter of ROI. And if SlideShare has been abandoned by its parents companies, and is not being straight about it, well, it’s wrecking the expected ROI and thus costing time and money for those companies that put “SlideShare” into their marketing plans.

Here is an example for how SlideShare is intentionally misleading its audience. After you upload a deck to SlideShare, you get a confirmation mail. Here it is:

SlideShare is encouraging you, in a very straightforward way, to try and get featured on its homepage. It even includes a link to Learn More about it. So there’s no way around the conclusion that SlideShare isn’t being honest, because you can’t really get featured on its homepage, not anymore at least.

The link leads to this page:

It’s pretty obvious that a deck was here, and was removed. One can still see the link that’s always beneath an embedded deck, with title and owner. SlideShare chose to remove the deck it created titled “7 Tips For Getting Featured on SlideShare". The link to the blog post at the top of the page is broken as well. This is hardly a coincidence and a clear signal from SlideShare that you can no longer be featured on its site.

Clicking on the link for the deck leads to this page:

So why doesn’t SlideShare / LinkedIn / Microsoft just come out and say it: we are done with SlideShare, please focus your efforts on different marketing channels. Why this game of scavenger hunt around a deserted website?

*We sent a comment request to LinkedIn on the day we published, 29/11. Once they respond, we’ll update here.

FRESH FROM UPDATE OVEN:

November 1st, 2016

As we said, we've sent LinkedIn a query with a link to the article:

Here is their response:

Guess we'll need to wait a few more days for a proper response. But, at least we're pleased to see that our request for comment is being taken seriously.