The LinkedIn API

John Musser, December 11th, 2007
Comments(8)

Yesterday LinkedIn made a broad set of announcements including a new user interface, additional features like a news feed, and more details on their new developer APIs and platform. The API will be phased in over the next few months and we’ve created our initial LinkedIn API Profile here. It looks like a full-featured platform and as LinkedIn’s Lucian Beebe described yesterday in a post entitled LinkedIn’s Intelligent Application Platform, there will be two primary models for developing LinkedIn applications:

Bring LinkedIn to your application. Using LinkedIn APIs and widgets, you will be able to integrate LinkedIn into your application by accessing information from a LinkedIn user’s network. Using this model, you can augment your web site with LinkedIn features, creating more utility on your site and the chance to stand out from the crowd.
Bring your application to LinkedIn. You will be able to write professionally-oriented applications that run inside LinkedIn.com for maximum visibility in a purely business network. We have announced support for Google’s OpenSocial platform and will add other models in the future.

The first lets users “take their LinkedIn network with them” in a approach like most web APIs including the original Facebook API, or, as Marc Andreessen might describes it: a “level 1 access API”. The second model is similar to the Facebook Platform, or a “level 2 plug-in API”, that will build on Google’s OpenSocial standards.

Given that there are about 17 million members now and about 1 million more each month, There going to be lots of interesting ways developers can build value on top of this platform. One of the first partners is BusinessWeek who will use the API to embed links within content that allows you to click on a company name and see who you are connected to via LinkedIn.

8 Responses to “The LinkedIn API”

December 11th, 2007 at 6:00 am

Comment by: dora

Hey Linkedin is becoming very cool now…..Like facebook even they are coming up apps but the apps related to business. Since Linkedin is very professional they are not compromising on it….they are still keeping it that way. More than fun people join Linkedin for purpose. I came across this site from some of the Blog which say Linkedin can be accessed over the phone without internet. In fact with this service, Linkedin access will be even more convenient than ever.
http://modazzle.com/cms/modazzleLp1.html?channel=CM&camp

December 11th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

Comment by: rascunho » Blog Archive » links for 2007-12-11

[...] The LinkedIn API The first lets users “take their LinkedIn network with them” in a approach like most web APIs including the original Facebook API, or, as Marc Andreessen might describes it: a “level 1 access API”. The second model is similar to the Facebook Platf (tags: blog.programmableweb.com 2007 mes11 dia11 at_tecp LinkedIn OpenSocial api) [...]

December 13th, 2007 at 2:12 am

Comment by: Bebo API Launches with Facebook Support

[...] with LinkedIn’s API announcement earlier this week the universe of social network APIs continues to rapidly [...]

December 13th, 2007 at 2:37 am

Comment by: 10,000 Marshmallows Links 2007-12-12 - 10,000 Marshmallows - Marketing Accountability: How to eat 10,000 Marshmallows

[...] The LinkedIn API [...]

December 18th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

Comment by: links for 2007-12-19 at DeStructUred Blog

[...] The LinkedIn API (tags: LinkedIn Social_Networking) [...]

January 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 am

Comment by: GigantiCo - Design, Marketing, Social Media... hell, whatever I want to write about. -Chris Grayson

I just discovered this site from a link at 10,000 Marshmallows. I’m going to del.icio.us tag you so I’ll remember to come back here. I was wondering when Linked[in] was going to move forward with their developer API.

June 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm

Comment by: Brandon COrbin

You can use Jobfu to grab a XML Version of any LinkedIn public profile by adding a “-asxml” to the end of url.

http://jobfu.org/billgates-asxml
http://jobfu.org/billgates

October 29th, 2008 at 3:15 am

Comment by: LinkedIn Launches Business-focused Application Platform

[...] itself, follows a much more controlled and button-downed approach. And like the LinkedIn API that we reported on last year, access is limited based on an approval [...]