u/illyism

One small thing I’ve noticed on LinkedIn:

Most profile pictures blend into the feed.

Grey background, office blur, tiny face, bad crop, old wedding photo, etc.

The issue is that your headshot is not only shown on your profile. It shows up next to every post, comment, DM, search result, and connection request.

So I started treating it more like a tiny “visual logo.”

What worked for me:

1. Crop closer than you think Your face should be easy to recognize even when the image is tiny.
2. Use a clean, simple expression A normal confident smile beats a forced “corporate” pose.
3. Wear what you’d actually wear for work Not too casual, not fake-professional.
4. Use a background color that stands out I use a yellow background because it pops in the LinkedIn feed. It makes my comments and posts easier to spot while people scroll.
5. Keep it consistent If people see your posts often, your photo becomes a recognizable cue.

Curious what others think: do you use a plain background, office background, or something more branded for your LinkedIn photo?

I stopped using Google Analytics ages ago. GA4 feels like opening a cockpit when all I want to know is "which traffic made money?"

The 2023 thread on this sub is pretty outdated now, so I figured I'd start a fresh one. The space has changed a lot, we have revenue analytics, AI session replays, and a bunch of new players.

Here's my current shortlist for 2026:

Revenue / Founder analytics

• DataFast - connects Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, etc with traffic so you see revenue per source, not just visitors. This is the one I open first now.
• PostHog - product analytics, funnels, replay, feature flags. Overkill for a blog, perfect for SaaS.

Privacy-first / simple

• Plausible - cookieless, clean, readable before coffee
• Simple Analytics - intentionally limited (the limitation is the feature)
• Fathom - agency-friendly, multi-site
• Rybbit - newer, "Plausible plus funnels and replay"

Self-hosted / open source

• Matomo - the grown-up GA replacement, enterprise-friendly
• Umami - lightweight, devs love it

Free / supplementary

• Cloudflare Web Analytics - free baseline if you're already on Cloudflare
• Microsoft Clarity - heatmaps + session recordings, free, great alongside another tool

My personal stack:

• DataFast for revenue + traffic
• PostHog for product events
• Plausible for marketing sites
• Clarity when I need heatmaps

The way I think about it now: pick the tool that answers your real question.

• "How many visited?" → Plausible / Fathom
• "What did users do?" → PostHog / Rybbit
• "What made money?" → DataFast

That last one is usually the one that actually matters.

What are you running in 2026? Anyone still on GA4 by choice?