Word: networks
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Here's a company I wish were public so everyone could share in its success: LinkedIn, the social network for business people...
While MySpace got to critical mass first and Facebook became the poster child for the social-network generation, LinkedIn has always been the tortoise in this race. I think of it as the anti-social network. Although every savvy white-collar worker in the U.S. has a LinkedIn account - basically just a page that lists résumé and contact info - most users don't really know what it's good for or what one can "do" there...
...meantime, LinkedIn is stepping up its game, trying to cement its role as an indispensable social network for people who still have jobs and provide an answer to the question, What can I do there? Today the company announced it was opening its network for the first time to partners, such as Google and Amazon, and offering business-focused applications created by outsiders to members. Eight applications, ranging from an Amazon book-review tool to a store-and-share space for a gigabit of files, went live Tuesday night. Expect more to come...
...this isn't your kids' social network. While Facebook became the darling of Silicon Valley in June 2007 when it created a completely open platform for developers - who quickly launched hundreds of thousands of applications - LinkedIn's plan is to carefully and slowly vet everything that goes onto its platform. "We don't want zombies and werewolves and all that," said Reid Hoffman, the brilliant entrepreneur who founded LinkedIn in May 2003, during a particularly bleak part of the dotcom meltdown. He told me that if his social network offered 60 applications a year from now, "we'd be very...
Jamie Templeton, LinkedIn's vice president of platform development, said the key to opening the network to outside developers is making sure every application provides value to a business user. LinkedIn's members, he said, "are professionally oriented. They want to come in and get the job done. They don't have tolerance for a signal-to-noise ratio that other populations...