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.

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.

This morning, at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco, I have the great pleasure of announcing one of our most important mobile efforts for 2009: the launch of LinkedIn for BlackBerry.  Needless to say, this launch has been hotly anticipated by the millions of LinkedIn members who make the BlackBerry their mobile business platform of choice.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Home

Imagine walking into any interview, any customer engagement or client meeting with the ability to look up the details on over 50 million professionals worldwide, in real-time.  Soon this will be a reality, as this application will bring the powerful capabilities of LinkedIn to your BlackBerry.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Search

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Profile

We’ve worked hard to develop an application that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the BlackBerry platform.  LinkedIn for BlackBerry will also include deep integration with the native Messages, Contacts & Calendar applications on the BlackBerry platform.  For example, here is an early screenshot of the native BlackBerry Messages application, with LinkedIn invitations and one-to-one messages integrated into the inbox:

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Messages

LinkedIn for BlackBerry will soon join our existing suite of mobile products, marking the next step in our continuing effort to bring LinkedIn to wherever you work.  This is just the beginning – expect continued enhancements and expansions of the LinkedIn mobile platform in 2010.

See you at the BlackBerry Developer Conference 2009. To stay updated on BlackBerry developments, join the LinkedIn for BlackBerry Group.

And, if you’re one of our users who can’t wait to find out when the application will be ready for install, just email blackberryapp@linkedin.com to receive a notification.

Editor’s note: This blog post is authored by Andrew He, a Stanford student currently completing his Master of Sciences degree in Computer Science.  Andrew is a two-time LinkedIn intern, and spent the summer of 2009 focused on the LinkedIn mobile platform.

I suppose this blog post could have been entitled: “What I did on my summer vacation.” Truth be told, I’m just thrilled to see LinkedIn for iPhone v1.5 in the iTunes app store. There’s nothing more gratifying as a developer than to see your work go live.

This past summer, I was able to dedicate myself to enhancing the LinkedIn mobile platform. In the Fall of 2008, I was lucky enough to be one of the first students to take the new CS 193P: iPhone Application Development course at Stanford. I was looking for the opportunity to put that work to good use, and LinkedIn was excited to have me join the mobile team for the summer.

LinkedIn for iPhone v1.5 adds a large number of caching and performance improvements to the original LinkedIn application. For most people, however, the most noticeable change will be the addition of a single new module: Inbox.

The Inbox offers quick and easy access to three key features: Invitations, Messages & Sent Items. The Invitations tab shows you all of your pending invitations, making it easy to quickly accept requests anywhere. The user interface includes the image of the inviter (if available), which makes it that much easier to recognize them. The badge shows you quickly how many pending invitations you have outstanding.

The application also lets you send invitations, either by entering their email address, or by going to their profile and clicking the invitation button.

The messages tab offers quick access to all of of your outstanding messages from your connections. The badge on the tab shows you how many unread messages you have. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to get through your messages by replying or archiving each item. You can also send a message to any of your LinkedIn connections.

Most internships at high tech startups involve new technologies and cool products. But it’s not everyday that you get to ship a real product like this with the potential to benefit millions of users.

I just want to say a quick thank you to Adam Nash, Jaikumar Ramanathan, and the entire LinkedIn mobile team. There are a lot of exciting improvements to the LinkedIn mobile platform on the way, but for now, I hope the addition of the Inbox will make the LinkedIn iPhone application an even more essential tool for mobile professionals.

If you’re interested in helping us with feedback and suggestions for future versions of the LinkedIn for iPhone application, come join us on the official LinkedIn group.

Download the latest version (v1.5) of LinkedIn’s iPhone app here

In June, I was excited to announce that LinkedIn launched a native application for the Palm Pre.  Since then, we’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback about the new platform, and as expected, quite a few feature requests.

I’m happy to report that as of today, as part of Palm webOS 1.2, the most common feature request from LinkedIn members has now been delivered: seamless syncing of your LinkedIn connections to your Palm Pre, via Palm Synergy.  Now every application on the Palm Pre can benefit from the information provided by your LinkedIn network.

The process is incredibly simple:

1. Make sure that you have received the new webOS 1.2 over-the-air update on your Palm Pre.  LinkedIn is only available with Palm webOS 1.2 or later.
2. Click the “Contacts” application
3. Select “Preferences & Accounts” from the menu
4. Click “Add An Account”
5. Select LinkedIn, and enter your LinkedIn email address and password.

That’s it.  You’ll find your address book, available to all applications, is now sync’ed daily with your LinkedIn connections.  The following fields will be automatically updated with every connection:

• Email address
• Title
• Company
• Photo

In addition to integration with Palm webOS, we’re also pleased to announce that we’ve uploaded the v1.0 of our LinkedIn for Palm Pre application.  It features a number of performance improvements, and offers an improved user experience for search, the number one feature for mobile professionals.  Now there is even less excuse to walk into a meeting without taking 30 seconds to type in their name and get the full detail about their professional experience.

We appreciate the feedback that you’ve given us on our first Palm Pre application, and we hope you enjoy these improvements.  Stay tuned, we’re planning to roll out additional LinkedIn mobile enhancements in the near future.

[Ed. note: Today's post features Gregg Brockway, co-founder of TripIt, who talks about the genesis of the MyTravel application on LinkedIn followed by some users sharing their experience of the app. The My Travel application on LinkedIn, along with the rest of the inApps on LinkedIn can be found here]

We started TripIt because we thought it should be easier for travelers to organize and share their trips. To this end, we built a technology that reads the data in your travel confirmation emails and uses it to create a master itinerary that’s easy to customize and share. Along the way, we also added support for over 500 travel booking sites worldwide.

As a startup, we were pretty excited when LinkedIn approached us about the MyTravel application last year. We immediately recognized this as a huge opportunity to deliver real benefits to business travelers.

When we designed the My Travel application, we wanted to deliver immediate value to LinkedIn users. Once the application is installed, you immediately see everyone in your LinkedIn network who will be close to you when you travel. We knew that this would not only become a great business resource, but will also provide some fun opportunities for people to get together socially.

Also, now more than ever, businesses are looking for ways to get the most out of the dollars they spend on travel. By making it easy for business travelers to set up productive meetings while they are on the road, the TripIt app is uniquely able to squeeze a little more value out of those dollars.

We get a lot of feedback from people who have connected with former colleagues, classmates and friends using the My Travel application on LinkedIn. I thought it would be fun to share a couple of real stories. Read on…

Susan Black, Travel Industry Consultant and Senior Marketing / eCommerce Executive:

Several industry contacts were attending the same conference in San Francisco. They saw that I was also traveling to San Francisco, via the TripIt application on LinkedIn, and sent me messages asking to meet while we were all there. I would say that these meetings were the best return on my investment for the two-day event! Had it not been for TripIt, it would have been unlikely that these meetings would have occurred – or had I just met up with the people at the conference with no forewarning, the meeting agendas would certainly not have been set in advance. Now, when I am going to events, I alert everyone using the TripIt application on LinkedIn.

Patrick Chanezon, Google Developer Advocate:

So, I’m at this conference about social networks for the education community in Montreal, and I meet up with Sylvain Carle at breakfast. I used to follow Sylvain’s blog years ago, and we had a web friendship, but had never met. Since we both use social networks heavily, we’re connected on LinkedIn. And, without knowing it, we both use the TripIt app on LinkedIn. During a session, I sit down next to Sylvain and start preparing demos for my Open Social presentation, while tweeting about the session. I wanted to demo the TripIt app on LinkedIn, because it is one of the social apps that I find really useful. And then it happens- I open the app and see that someone in my network is also in Montreal today- Sylvain, who’s sitting right next to me. That was so hilarious that I did a screenshot and tweeted it right away. To me this is a fun example of the power of a social application like TripIt, transforming business trips in social objects, and helping me meet old friends, or discover new ones.

If you want to join the fun and see where everyone is in your LinkedIn network, just add My Travel to your LinkedIn account. And be sure to contact us at feedback@tripit.com if TripIt helps you re-connect with someone or just helps your trips go a little more smoothly. Feel free to also leave a comment on this post.

I’ve got some exciting news for iPhone lovers as I’m here to announce LinkedIn’s very own native iPhone app. Based on the same back end which serves LinkedIn mobile, LinkedIn iPhone App provides users with a quicker response and more features; basically the complete mobile experience for professional networkers.

In additional to seeing status update, browsing connections, and search that you can already do with the web enabled app (check out my earlier blog post and video demo that covers the original feature set), here are three major enhancements you’ll find on the new native iPhone app:

1. Update your status on the road

2. Address Book Integration

3. Saving your search history and results

Thank you for using LinkedIn Mobile/iPhone app. Please continue to send us feedback. We are working hard to improve the application and add more features. Leave a comment or two.