LinkedIn opens to developers

 

Gallery

By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 10 Dec 2007 at 10:05

LinkedIn has announced that it will be opening up its site to third-party developers, just as Facebook did in May this year. The Intelligent Applications platform will allow developers to create plug-ins for the site, and use features from LinkedIn on third-party websites.

Intelligent Applications will be opened up to BusinessWeek magazine initially, allowing LinkedIn users to hover over company names within articles and see a list of contacts associated with that company.

"What we are trying to do is make professionals more productive by making them able to find one another, learn more about each other and communicate efficiently with each other," says LinkedIn chief executive, Dan Nye. "It's not a place where you waste two hours of your time trying to find a date."

LinkedIn will be selective about which applications are approved for use on the site, vetting each one. This is in contrast to Facebook, which now has over 10,000 applications available to users.

LinkedIn will also offer support for Google's OpenSocial program, which is an attempt to make third-party applications universal across multiple social networks.

Rupert Murdoch denied last week's rumour that he was in talks to buy LinkedIn, saying that the talks were about potential partnership deals.