LinkedIn Groups API: Professional Engagement Anytime, Anywhere

Millions of professionals use LinkedIn Groups to connect and share insights with like-minded professionals every day. With almost one million groups on LinkedIn, the top request we receive from group owners is to provide new ways to enable engagement within their communities. With that goal in mind, we’re announcing today that application developers can now take the rich content and engagement of LinkedIn Groups across the professional web using the new LinkedIn Groups API.

Explore the LinkedIn Groups API

Professional Engagement Anytime, Anywhere

Developers can bring the insights and powerful networking tools in LinkedIn Groups directly to professional applications. Whether building tools to help professionals keep in touch with their communities, enhancing organization websites, or creating mobile apps for special events, we think LinkedIn Groups are a key lever for developers to drive rich, professional conversation and networking within tools that our members use. The Groups API will enable applications to:

  • Get Group Discussions by Popularity and Recency
  • Get My Group Memberships
  • Get Suggested Groups
  • Join a Group
  • Post new group discussions
  • Comment, like and follow group discussions
  • Establish connections with other professionals

Powering Events with LinkedIn Groups

As an example of what developers can do with the Groups API, we are excited to have Microsoft debut the first large-scale implementation of the Groups API on their Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 event website.


This initiative is part of Microsoft’s larger social media efforts that reaches across multiple channels and beyond this event to ensure an ongoing dialogue with its partner community throughout the year. According to Microsoft, 53% of partners surveyed in a recent Microsoft Partner Network survey use LinkedIn. Integrating LinkedIn Groups to the event site will promote growth of this partner community, which relies heavily on business networking, as well as vibrant and relevant real-time conversation during the event.

The Groups API will also allow the Microsoft Partner Network to take advantage of content longevity, as community-generated content will continue to live on inside the LinkedIn Group beyond the event time-frame.  Imagine the benefit to attendees as they share comments about event sessions and activities for other attendees to consume in real-time, and establish long-lasting professional connections with others in their community. Hear more about how Microsoft is using Groups at their online forum chat today.

Ready, Set, Code!

We know that it is important to make our API capabilities available to developers in the technologies that they are comfortable with. Thanks to the flexibility of our platform, our new Groups API is accessible via our easy to use JavaScript API as well as our language agnostic RESTful APIs.

Explore the LinkedIn Groups API

Stay tuned for even more exciting news from the LinkedIn Platform team this summer!  Please don’t be shy to tell us what you think — either by commenting or participating in the forums at developer.linkedin.com.