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.
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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.
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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.”
– Iain Dodsworth, Founder and CEO of TweetDeck
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.
- Topics:
- LinkedIn API
Comments
The idea to open up will definitely help it grow even more, perhaps far more exponentially than it has in the recent past
LinkedIn API will provide a richer customer experience, ultimately driving more traffic and business to linkedIn.
Congratulations on a truly enormous accomplishment! It’s really exciting to see LinkedIn become more and more essential to my business identity on the web.
Great work!
I’m most interested in knowing if this is one step closer to a truly portable profile format. The adoption of OAuth sounds like a positive move.
This is a very good move. There are so many things we can do now. Linkedin is a great place to connect with people and share information. hoping these API will take linkedin to a higher level.
Congrats! I have been waiting on this for over a year. Never too late.
Congrats to the LinkedIn team on the platform launch!
Just a quick update, Ribbit integrated the LinkedIn API into our Caller ID 2.0 feature inside of Ribbit Mobile. It is live and in the wild (beta launched on November 3rd). http://www.ribbit.com/mobile/caller-id.php
Best of luck to you all and we can’t wait to see what other companies do with your API. Think it a big win for business professionals.
Brilliant. The best innovation you guys have made thusfar.
Finally! Very much looking forward to integrating Linkedin with the new software products we develop for our customers.
Excellent news. Well overdue. Can’t wait to start integrating.
hey Adam… welcome to the web 2.0 pool party! the water’s fine, hop on in!
(note: you’re a little late with the lampshade, but there’s always room for more geeks
up next: where’s the rev-share / revenue love?
This is great news, and we intend to take advantage of it. Our proposed use of it is described at http://www.intellog.com/blog/?p=263.
Many many congratulations for this accomplishment! LinkedIn team Rocks!
I do hope the APIs include hooks for LinkedIN Groups… these have become the most useful area for me and I’d love to have an off-line search-able version of this.
For security, maybe the Group Manager can turn on/off the ability for this to be done
Amazing news!
Though I could not find docs for Widgets. it will be more good if LinkedIN provides option to add 3rd party widgets within LinkedIn website
This is brilliant. Congratulations to the whole team – Linkedin can only get bigger and more wicked. Technology is making our lives so much easier to link up with some amazing people and this is what linkedin is all about. It’s fabulous. I so happy to part of such a dynamic product and look forward to it helping my business. http://1imobile.com
Suzanne
Fabulous– I think B2B is the next, much bigger phase of social networking. This is a Merchant Circle killer.
Fantastic , however as most API’s come in it will defiantely make life easier for new apps,but what happens to those who would have already started integration with Linked in..they will still have to find some workarounds to get to display the required data.
also currently it has been found that the API’s are exposed only via REST which really makes it difficult to catch the required exceptions if it fails in any of the RESTfull calls.will the api’s anytime in future be just like other API’s where we will have a dll and we just have to create a wrapper around the calls ?
..Great subject. I have been playing around with the idea of the comment structure recently.
The popular comment layout is common, so it is easily recognized when scanning to post a comment. If the comment section is in a different format, then I am going to spend more time trying to decipher what everything means
IT Provider
I didn’t realize they were so many widget – better check them out
Great job done!
Thanks for the new year’s gift.
saw it 5 times
5 stars
I think today linkedin is an important asset for any business, integrating it with powerful tools like api for websites will definitely help more businesses.
Are there any examples of sites who have integrated linkedin open for business for their business functionality. Please share if you know about any.
This is a great article that is practical yet highly insightful. I have certainly gained a greater understanding on the subject. Thanks!
I totally agree Adam for online business use
LinkedIn and use it to develop and market products online, thanks for your post is very interesting.
Alberto Destefanis.
http://negocios-en-linea.com