Want to learn more about how to develop or integrate with the LinkedIn platform? Then plan on attending the LinkedIn Developer Meetup at Kube Hotel, Paris (December 9th at 5:30pm CET / 17:30 hrs) that we’re holding on the sidelines of the Le Web Conference this year. A big thanks to Dave McClure and Loic Le Meur for helping with the developer meetup!
At the meetup, we’ll show you how you can use our Developer Portal to quickly get up and running. You’ll also get to hear from other developers who’ve already built integrations with our APIs. We’ll have ample time for Q&A and some networking after that (of course)!
LinkedIn Developer Meetup at Kube Hotel, Paris (Le Web 09) on Dec 9th, 09
Since we opened the LinkedIn APIs for all developers, we’ve seen a tremendous response from the developer community. We’ve seen developers quickly build a community at our Developer portal and build the tools and techniques that make it so easy to integrate with LinkedIn. These include a PHP Library, a Ruby Gem and .NET integration via DotNetOpenAuth.
We believe this rapid uptake is the result of open standards such as OAuth, which allows other developers to use off the shelf libraries and open-source projects to quickly take advantage of them. I look forward to discussing these topics at the meetup mentioned above.
We’re excited to see integrations like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Sobees and many more that now allow you to bring LinkedIn to your desktop. Similar integrations announced earlier this month with Microsoft Outlook 2010, Blackberry, etc. will continue to help you extend your LinkedIn network to all areas of your professional life – wherever you work.
[Ed. note: This is the first in a series of posts on different web sites and services integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Todd Pringle, VP of Product Management at Yoono, for kicking off the series with this initial post]
Here at Yoono we’ve just launched the latest upgrade to our social aggregation app, Yoono 7. It has many new features but one of the things our we are most excited about is (yes, you guessed right) LinkedIn integration! Our focus has always been deep integration with the most popular social networks (and instant messaging services) rather than supporting a hundred social networks in a half-baked way. For a while now the missing link (sorry, had to pun) for us has been LinkedIn – it’s consistently been the most requested social network addition from our users for over a year.
As professionals leverage their real time social stream more and more for content discovery and relationship management, LinkedIn has become a must have network for us. Thanks to the new open LinkedIn Platform, we’ve been able to deliver that in an extremely short amount of time.
For developers considering the LinkedIn platform, we can say with confidence that it’s been extremely easy to develop on. Within a couple days of getting our developer key we’d completed our initial integration that enabled our users to view their LinkedIn updates stream, update their LinkedIn status, or view and search their LinkedIn contacts.
Yoono already leverages oAuth for other supported social networking services such as Twitter, MySpace, and FriendFeed so it was a big bonus with LinkedIn’s embrace of oAuth as well. We’re already working on designing additional features supported by LinkedIn and most of all we’re excited about the possibilities.
If you’d like to learn more about Yoono 7, check out our blog post here. You can download our Firefox add-on today with LinkedIn support as well as new features such as support for Twitter Lists, Facebook Inbox & Notifications, multiple accounts per social network, Groups (yes, you can add LinkedIn users to a group with friends from other networks then filter your updates stream by group) and full text search of your social stream so you can see what your LinkedIn connections have to say about a particular topic. We’ll also be updating our Yoono Desktop for Windows and Mac with LinkedIn support later this week, so stay tuned.
We recently passed 3 million downloads and we’re confident LinkedIn integration is going to further extend our reach and provide more value for our users. Congrats to the LinkedIn team on a great start for the Platform!
[Ed. note:This belongs to a series of posts on LinkedIn around the world. We recently announced LinkedIn's Managing Director in Australia – Clifford Rosenberg - and thought we’d pose some questions to him about, LinkedIn and Australia. This was a part of Jose Mallabo's conversation with Cliff during his recent visit to our Mountain View headquarters]
JM: What’s the state of professional networking in Australia?
CR: Australia’s geographical and time zone differences make meeting up and connecting with other professionals especially challenging. LinkedIn provides a forum for professionals across Australia to come together in a highly efficient and cost effective manner. With close to 1 million Australian professionals already on the site and double-digit growth over the past year, word is spreading fast. Even more impressive is that Australia is one of LinkedIn’s top performing countries, particularly when viewed as a factor of professionals per capita.
JM: You have a great resume working with some big brands over your career. So, why LinkedIn?
CR: It’s a combination of reasons. What really stands out for me is how quickly LinkedIn has grown to be the largest networking site for professionals in Australia and New Zealand. Much of LinkedIn’s growth has been driven entirely by word of mouth and that tells me just how large the potential could be now that we are establishing a local presence. I am convinced that LinkedIn will be the default professional services site both on the web and on mobile.
JM: What’s your personal experience with LinkedIn over the years?
CR: I have been an avid user of LinkedIn for many years – at first, like a lot of users, signing up because someone I trusted invited me and from there I just seemed to get more and more invites. Today, LinkedIn is where I stay in touch with my peers, to communicate, collaborate and share, in a respectful yet fun way.
My favorite LinkedIn feature would have to be the recently launched Profile Organizer that enables me to keep notes and interesting facts on colleagues and contacts. I also use LinkedIn on my mobile when out and about to access colleagues’ contact details or look up someone’s profile before a meeting.
JM: You’ve been on board for about a week now, what will you be working on first?
CR: Well, in many ways we are in start-up mode in Australia, with the big difference from a typical start up being that we have a great brand and a rapidly growing and engaged customer base. Some of my key priorities include establishing our offices in Sydney, bringing on board some of the best and brightest people and most importantly engaging with our fast growing user community at an even deeper level.
JM: In 10 years where do you see professional networking and LinkedIn in Australia?
CR: Professionals no longer think of long-term careers with the same company. The world has definitely become ‘flatter’ and the concept of geographic boundaries is becoming less of an issue as technological advances enable us to be increasingly networked and connected. In my opinion today’s professional increasingly acts as a small business rather than an employee and is constantly looking for new growth opportunities. With that thinking in mind, LinkedIn provides the perfect solution for professionals to navigate this new way of thinking and operating.
As a final thought, I also think that within 10 years LinkedIn will be an essential career management course graduates go to begin their careers.
I’d love to hear from our users in Australia what some of your successes on using LinkedIn have been lately. Feel free to leave us a note here or comment on this post.
Code Alert!This is a part of our continuing series on Engineering at LinkedIn. If this isn’t your cup of Java, check back tomorrow for regular LinkedIn programming. In the meanwhile, check out some of our recent feature announcements, tips and tricks, or success stories.
Over fifty million people use LinkedIn to find, connect and collaborate with professionals worldwide, do business and build their careers. It is the mission of LinkedIn’s engineering and operations teams to build and scale LinkedIn systems, services and develop features and functionality that makes the LinkedIn service effective and delightful to use.
Apart from traditional challenges of running a high-traffic 24/7 service, we are also faced with the unique problems of scaling the professional graph, making all our services interoperable while respecting privacy and visibility rules along that graph. Another challenge is making sure we present to busy professionals the most relevant information possible – whether it’s the network updates stream, search results or other content they choose to share. LinkedIn engineers and architects recently shared some of the technologies we are working on during QCon San Francisco 2009 conference.
Sean Dawson and myself talked about LinkedIn Network Updates Service – the information stream you see every day when you hit LinkedIn homepage. We will continue sharing our experiences and technologies with the engineering community – as we have done in the past.
Please take a moment – visit LinkedIn Technology Careers site and join a great team of engineers and make a difference in how professionals do business.
As I stood last night in a London venue full of some of our UK members, I overheard Lou Reed’s musical director deep in conversation with a senior executive from one of the world’s largest financial institutions.
That doesn’t happen every day, I thought.
What it brought home to me was the key reason why there are now more than three million LinkedIn members in the UK. It’s not down to the range of features we offer, the speed at which we innovate, or the number of languages the site is available in. It’s the members and the rich mix of expertise, experience, wisdom and the positive, collaborative attitude that they bring.
Without you, there would be no LinkedIn.
I started with LinkedIn almost two years ago and it’s been quite a ride as we’ve watched the British professional community take to the site with the sort of industrious enthusiasm that typifies the way business is done in this country. Our team in London has grown alongside the membership and, thanks in no small part to the great reception LinkedIn has had in the UK, we’re now looking to further expansion into Europe.
To mark hitting yesterday’s special milestone, one of our co-founders Reid Hoffman made a special trip to the UK to personally thank and celebrate with some our members at a networking event (naturally) in central London last night. As the conversation flowed it was humbling to see the variety of our membership all in one room; from financiers to software developers, journalists to entrepreneurs and public sector figures to marketers, all these and more were represented from young rising stars to established industry leaders and CEOs.
Events such as this allow us to get the immediate first-hand feedback we want from our members on their experience of the site and reaction to recent developments.
They also serve to highlight the main reason for LinkedIn’s success in the UK and around the world. Which is why, if you would indulge me, I want to take this opportunity to thank our members that have helped make LinkedIn such a success in the UK. Three million professionals from every conceivable background and industry with one common aim: to share their knowledge and learn from others so that they might do their job a little better or get a little closer to whatever professional and personal goals they have. Your individual contribution to the LinkedIn community makes it what it is. Thank you!
With the planned site developments and the expanding community, the next few years will be as exciting as the last two. I look forward to celebrating the next milestone with you all and the other professionals we welcome over the coming months and years.
Over fifty million users entrust their professional identities and relationships with LinkedIn, helping build LinkedIn into the largest global professional network today. However, professionals around the world use a wide variety of applications and Web sites to get their work done, and they have spoken loud and clear that they want the ability to leverage their professional networks wherever they work.
Starting today, developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Developer.linkedin.com is now live and open for business.
The evolution of the LinkedIn Platform
Over the past months, LinkedIn has supported integrations with some of the most prominent and critical software applications in the enterprise. Partnerships with companies like IBM, Blackberry (Research in Motion), and most recently Microsoft, have given us time to invest in both functionality and scalability of the platform.
S
oftware is moving to the cloud, and business applications need context for who people are and how they are related. LinkedIn now is the obvious choice as a provider for those services. It is hard to imagine a business application that would not benefit from LinkedIn integration.”
– Roger Neal, SVP/GM at BusinessWeek Digital, McGraw-Hill
At LinkedIn, we have always believed that business applications are better when they are built over a platform of professional reputation and relationships. In real life, our most valuable professional assets are the skills and experience we acquire and the trusted relationships we build. It’s not surprising that business software becomes more productive and valuable when it is built over these services.
How can I start developing for the LinkedIn Platform today?
Registering as a LinkedIn developer is as simple as filling out a form on developer.linkedin.com. The LinkedIn platform leverages the open OAuth standard to make integrations from almost any language and development environment as simple as possible.
W
hat a breath of fresh air. We were able to go to http://developer.linkedin.com, request a key, and actually write functioning code in less than 15 minutes. It’s amazing to have access to such a powerful platform on tap at any time.”
A number of developers who have helped provide us with feedback and guidance in our development will be announcing integrations in the coming weeks. For example, TweetDeck is announcing full support for the LinkedIn platform in its next version. Now you can easily view or take action on your LinkedIn network updates from within TweetDeck, with the full integration of the LinkedIn profile information of the person who posted the update.
This is the beginning of a new set of opportunities for the LinkedIn platform, and we look forward to seeing the integrations that developers will launch in the coming weeks and months.
Stay tuned for additional enhancements over during the coming months as we learn and grow this platform together.
Today, Microsoft announces an exciting new addition to the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 – the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector is designed to seamlessly bring communications history as well as business and social networking feeds into your Outlook experience.
LinkedIn will be the first networking site to support the Outlook Social Connector. The LinkedIn functionality will be available in early 2010. Our big belief is that you can be much more effective if you have your professional network close at hand, and you can leverage your online identity in the work you do on a daily basis. The Outlook Social Connector will bring your LinkedIn Professional Network to where you work – right within your e-mail inbox.
Here are three key benefits you get from this integration:
1. Keep up with LinkedIn connections right from your e-mail inbox
One of the great things about LinkedIn is being able to learn what your professional connections are working on and thinking about. Just glance at the Network Updates on your LinkedIn homepage and you’ll be able to learn what articles & books your connections are reading, what conferences they are attending, and what questions they are asking and answering on LinkedIn. Many use this information to keep current with their industry and profession, as well as to learn new things and expand their horizons.
The Outlooks Social Connector makes this even easier – by automatically showing the latest activity (i.e. Network Updates) from any LinkedIn connection that sends you an e-mail. So now you can get the latest information from your LinkedIn network even without having to leave your inbox.
What’s more, for any connection with a public LinkedIn profile photo, you’ll even get to see their picture as you communicate.
2. E-mail your LinkedIn connections directly from Outlook
Know that perfect LinkedIn connection to help you with a business task or question but don’t remember their current email address? No longer do you have to go to the LinkedIn website to find their contact information before sending them a message, as your LinkedIn network is now available right within your inbox. Just start typing the name of a LinkedIn connection in the “To:” field of an Outlook message and the connections’ e-mail address from LinkedIn will automatically appear as if they are an existing Outlook contact. In fact, the Outlook Social Connector will create an Outlook Contacts folder for all of your LinkedIn connections and bring down their contact information, professional details, and picture from LinkedIn into Outlook.
3. Keep building your professional network from Outlook
Working with someone new but haven’t had a chance to connect with them on LinkedIn? By bringing professional networking to where you work, the Outlook Social Connector again makes it easy. Just click a button next to any e-mail you receive and instantly send an invitation to connect to the e-mail’s sender. It’s that easy.
We hope that these functions start bringing some of the key elements of your LinkedIn professional network to where you work – your Outlook e-mail inbox, sometime early next year. But these are certainly just the first steps. Let us know what else you’d like to see by leaving a comment below.
Last week LinkedIn launched a significant integration with Twitter, enabling professionals to expand their personal brands to their professional networks and vice-versa. To show our users how that might work, today we’re asking you: What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
The best business advice I ever received seemed to be something of an oxymoron. As an entrepreneur, you’re told frequently, “Be persistent! Follow your vision! Flatten obstacles!” But on the other hand, you’re urged to “Learn from the market! Adapt to changing conditions! Take a different course!” Knowing when to persist and when to be flexible is more of an art than a science. So in a fluid, fast-changing world, sometimes you stick to your vision, and sometimes you adapt quickly.
Unfortunately, that’s more than 140 characters! So watch the video to see how Biz and I resolve our best advice to the unique Twitter format. And tweet your best advice today with #in.
Here’s how you can share the best business advice you’ve received on LinkedIn and Twitter
1. LinkedIn and Twitter users can participate by tweeting the best business advice they’ve received with the hashtag #in.
2. If you’ve already linked your accounts, this hashtag will automatically update your LinkedIn status, enabling you to share your wisdom with both networks simultaneously.
[Ed. note:This is the first in a series of posts on LinkedIn around the world. We just announced LinkedIn's country manager in India - Hari V. Krishnan - and here are his initial thoughts as he visits our Mountain View headquarters this week]
I am truly excited about my new role heading up LinkedIn India – a platform which has been an integral part of my own career. The Indian internet has grown strongly and changed dramatically over the last 5 years with social media, e-commerce and advertising all beginning to come of age. Having witnessed the change first hand working with leading companies like MySpace and Yahoo and start ups like Travelguru, I see the need to share knowledge assuming a more central role in sustaining the growth. I’m convinced that LinkedIn will play a strong role as a platform for sharing connections and knowledge.
India is the largest democracy on earth and one of the fastest growing economies globally. We have a large, skilled workforce and in the recent past our IT, services and telecommunications businesses have given us global acclaim. With the internet helping to shrink the world, Indians have already started developing their global connections. On LinkedIn, we already have over 3.4 million members from India and we continue to add 70,000 new users every week!
In the coming years I believe talent, professionalism, collaboration and networking will play an increasingly important role in sustaining India’s position in the global economy. The years ahead will also be full of great learning and growth for India’s professionals.
As I conclude my visit to LinkedIn, here in Mountain View, the excitement for the future of India and global professional networks is palpable. The pumped-up planning discussions and smiles (and lack of yawns) at every meeting, tell me we are excited to meet the challenges ahead. I look forward to linking up with many of you when I’m back in Mumbai. See you soon!
As you’ve likely heard by now, we launched our first Twitter integration features at LinkedIn earlier this week. For professionals who want to make Twitter part of their professional identity, you can now easily add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile, and seamlessly post LinkedIn status updates to Twitter, and vice-versa.
This launch also brings with it a brand new addition to the LinkedIn application platform: Tweets.
Tweets is an application that allows you to seamless integrate basic Twitter functionality into your LinkedIn experience. For our users who are regular users of Twitter, Tweets provides the following:
Twitter client functionality, right from your LinkedIn homepage. Tweets adds a module to your homepage that allows you to easily see the most recent tweets of the people you follow on Twitter. You can also easily reply to each tweet, or retweet it. Better still, you can even share it with your LinkedIn connections.
Add your recent tweets to your LinkedIn profile. Tweets adds a module to your profile that shows your Twitter account and most recent tweets with a rich, compelling presentation. You can easily choose to either display your most recent tweets, or only those tweets which feature the #in or #li hashtags.
Easily browse the tweets of people you follow. Once you click through into the Tweets application, you can easily click on any Twitter user name, and view the most recent tweets of that user.
Next week, we’ll be adding Tweets to the Application directory on LinkedIn. For the time being, if you’re interested in giving Tweets a try, here is the link to the Tweets installation page. It’s also available from the “Add Application” menu on the homepage.
Tweets joins its sibling application, Company Buzz, the most popular application to date on the LinkedIn platform. Company Buzz makes it simple for professionals to easily keep track of what people are saying about their company, products, competitors, and partners in real time by monitoring saved Twitter searches. Together, they are a powerful set of tools for professionals to make monitoring Twitter a part of their LinkedIn routine.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding additional functionality to Tweets to make it as easy as possible for LinkedIn members to find and follow people on Twitter. We hope you enjoy this new addition to the LinkedIn application platform.
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