Following
rumours over the last month that they were about to be snapped up by News Corporation, B2B social network LinkedIn
announced the launch of new features in attempt to re-cement it's position as the leading business network.
The new and improved LinkedIn will include a new homepage (yet to go live) and a developers platform, called Intelligent Applications Platform which allows third-party developers to build applications that run on external sites or within LinkedIn itself.
Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn comments, "Our focus is 100% professional, so we will be working with select business partners to build high value, high productivity applications.?
The first
application partner is BusinessWeek.com. The LinkedIn API will allow BusinessWeek readers to access LinkedIn networks of persons mentioned within articles and features and will run from the BusinessWeek website. Roger Neal, senior vice president of BusinessWeek digital says, "The ability to have this information will make BusinessWeek's high quality content more useful and actionable for our users."
LinkedIn's Intelligent Applications Platform includes the ability to develop applications using Google's OpenSocial. Earlier in 2007, LinkedIn
announced their plans to introduce an API strategy and were one of the first social networking sites to sign up to OpenSocial when it launched at the beginning of November.
More information, including a demonstrational video is available on the
LinkedIn Blog.The move follows
MySpace and
Facebook attempting to appeal more to the niche business networking user.