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Any startups doing anything interesting with LinkedIn API, yet?

10 points by fieldforceapp ↗ HN
Spending the holidays integrating the LinkedIn API to our app; I know, I know, get a life. Looking to revisit this old thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492642

The API seems to be getting a little bit better, but the ToS still prevents simple things like sending HTML in a message!

Any suggestions for a better way to reach business users with a (respectfully) viral app? Jive seems to be opening up their API, what about Yammer?

4 comments

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epynonymous
slightly off topic, but i was noticing a correlation between activity on linkedin and people quitting or changing jobs, it's been rather uncanny how correlated they have been (8 out of 8 folks that have left lately have been using linked in aggressively before departing) and this is in china, land of blocked sites (facebook, twitter, etc).

i'm wondering if there's data to be mined from other such sites so that you can make a prediction of who's quitting. i see this as a major privacy issue, i.e. as i'm a user of linked in and someone's trying to predict if i'm quitting my job.

fieldforceapp
/* A friend at MyBlogLog (!) called LinkedIn the "social network of last resort," and it has that air or desperation about it. A sudden request for referrals is akin to a passive aggressive cry for help! /

So you're basically telling me my effort to integrate with LinkedIn is a complete* waste of time, unless I'm trying to capitalize on pathos and desperation? :(

AlexMuir
OT: I'm in Shanghai in mid-January. Keen to meet HN people there - drop me an email if you're around - me@alexmuir.com
kljensen
Reaching business users is very difficult: they are generally older and not active on social networks with the exception of linked in. However, few people are "active" on LI except marketers and job seekers. I run a service in the corporate/legal that relies on invites from existing users to get new users. We decided LI integration was not a good use of time. When I have posted content in LI groups I notice very low click through, regardless of the nature of the content.