Mobile A/B Testing at LinkedIn: How Members Shape Our Apps
Article Summary
LinkedIn ships a single mobile binary but runs dozens of A/B tests simultaneously. Here's how they pulled it off without constant app releases.
Akhilesh Gupta breaks down LinkedIn's mobile experimentation framework that solves the classic problem: how do you A/B test native apps when you can't push updates instantly like on web? Their solution puts the server in control.
Key Takeaways
- All mobile clients render UI from view-based JSON served dynamically from backend
- XLNT platform assigns experiment buckets server-side using member attributes and context
- Bug fixes and UI changes deploy without client updates or app store approval
- Performance analyzed by device type reveals when Android outperforms iOS or vice versa
- Scaling to 100% rollout requires only tweaking experiment definitions, zero client iteration
Critical Insight
LinkedIn decoupled mobile UI from client code, enabling rapid server-side experimentation with the measurement accuracy of traditional A/B testing.
