LinkedIn, the business networking site, on Monday gave the world the most detailed glimpse yet of its forthcoming application platform, which will be rolled out over the next few months.
Seeking to capitalise on the success of Facebook’s platform strategy, LinkedIn’s platform will do two things: First, like Facebook, it will allow outside developers to build applications that live inside the LinkedIn site. Second, it will allow outside companies to embed LinkedIn data in their own applications. The results could be interesting, as Eric Eldon of VentureBeat writes:
With this platform, it’s easy to imagine LinkedIn data appearing within Salesforce and Oracle business software, along with these [companies] creating modules that feature information from their software within LinkedIn. The result of this sort of integration: You’d automatically see valuable business connections as you’re working.
Because of its exclusive business focus, successful applications on LinkedIn may have difficulty gaining traction on other social networks where users place a greater emphasis on games and entertainment. Still with 16m business users, LinkedIn is already a big and potentially lucrative market in its own right. With Facebook rumoured to be working on ways for users to distinguish between social and work relationships, and with individual companies examining ways to take advantage of social networking technologies to encourage better communication between their own employees, further distribution opportunities may not be far behind.
