LinkedIn's platform loosens up

Professional networking site LinkedIn's platform, previously a closed offering for select partners, has opened up to developers at large, according to an announcement Monday on the company blog.

Well, sort of. Building an embeddable widget on LinkedIn, unlike Facebook's, still requires a stringent application process. But LinkedIn's own code has now been opened up so that developers can integrate it into their own sites. It's launched a developer site for those interested in features that let site users access their LinkedIn profile and contacts externally. They still have to request a key to get into the platform's application program interface (API), which means that LinkedIn widgets likely will not be coming to office prank-calling Web sites any time soon, despite that they could make it much easier to robo-call your boss and ask if his refrigerator is running.

One of the first participants, for example, is desktop Twitter client TweetDeck, which says that it will soon allow users to plug in their LinkedIn contacts' status updates alongside Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace contacts.

LinkedIn has about 50 million users as of last count.

[ddebellis]

Correction: http://developer.linkedin.com - I was only able to resolve the singular, not the plural as it is linked to in this article.<br />I think we're fortunate to have battled interoperability in the past with instant messaging clients which allows for better interfaces for this in the present with social networking websites and in the future. Whether it is feasible to do so does not, however, reference whether or not these independently motivated networks should talk to one another. For most people these networks are separated for a functional reason. I worry that one day someone will lose a job for making a sarcastic comment on their facebook wall that bounces over to a tweet that finds its way to a status update on linkedin.

[nicholasjlord]

You can now ad the desktop Twitter client Hootsuite which has just updatd to allow Linkedin contact's status updates. Updated a few hours ago my time.(GMT +1 ) This should show rapid take up as Hootsuite manages a number of accounts, posting to all or individual accounts with pics, shortened URL's etc etc is a snack.