The Ex-LinkedIn now Shake Content CCO on the platform's credibility shift, why athletes are finally moving in, and why the person now carries the brandFor episode 58 of A Guy With A Scarf, summer edition, I spoke with Dani Markovits. Dani joined LinkedIn in 2021 as one of its first creator managers and stayed four years. Now he is CCO at Shake Content, a LinkedIn agency. Few people have watched the platform change from the inside and the outside the way he has.His headline point lands fast. LinkedIn stopped being the place you open only when you want a job. Ten years ago almost everyone logged in to hire or to be hired. Today people scroll it on the bus like TikTok. It became a mix of social feed, job market, and the room where professional conversations happen.The word Dani kept using was intention. People arrive ready to connect and talk business, which is why direct messages work there and fall flat on Instagram. Trust sits underneath all of it.On personality, his take is that you earn the right to go off-topic. Keep your expertise as the anchor, then let the human side show. "If you only share memes, if you only talk about music or about food, I don't think that's a recipe for success."Sport is arriving late, and that is the opportunity. When Dani pushed sport at LinkedIn, colleagues doubted the fit and athletes said the platform was "for boring people." That has flipped. Athletes want to invest, sit on boards, back causes. LinkedIn is where the audience wants to hear about the life beyond the pitch. They "don't wanna be known only as the tennis guy or as the football lady." And here they read their own comments, because they are speaking straight to decision-makers.I saw this in a bar in Torino. Alex Del Piero sat in front of me, talking for hours about family, business, investments, and cinema. Close to zero football. That is the version athletes bring to LinkedIn.Reach is not the metric. "You don't need a huge audience," Dani said. What matters is who you get in front of. He has seen athletes with small followings do very well.The biggest recent change is that LinkedIn now measures who is posting, alongside what they post. It judges whether the author has the credibility to speak on a topic. One football post, word for word, should travel further from me than from him. "It matters the credentials, it matters the earned experience." Reach can drop while engagement holds or improves, which means the matching is working.LinkedIn is finally serving creators too. A native creator marketplace, video monetization, a call-out feature. Brands now see that creators and experts drive the decisions, and in B2B they all live on LinkedIn.Shake Content puts the person ahead of the company page. The share of people who actually post on LinkedIn is in the low single digits, so the room to stand out is wide open. Dani works with founders, executives, and athletes on credibility and visibility, with the person first and the company page second.On the corporate side, the old fear that employees build their own brand at the company's expense is the wrong lens. Companies gain from association. Four years ago firms blocked employees from posting. Now they push them and hire on the strength of their LinkedIn activity. "The best people suited to speak about your company is your own employees." Cheaper, and more impactful. His caveat: anybody can do this. Not everybody should. There is no shortcut.Dani also launched his newsletter, "LinkedIn/actually," after years of telling everyone else to do the same.My position is clear. LinkedIn rewarding credibility over raw reach is the healthiest move it has made in years. It favors people who know their subject and show up as themselves.