LinkedIn is being smart, says Mike La Rotonda
With less fanfare than the more boisterous Facebook, LinkedIn open the doors of its site to third-party applications.
The social network for job hunting and business relationships quietly invited its users in an e-mail early this week to use nine applications from developers such as Google, Tripit, the blog site WordPress, Amazon, Box.net and Huddle.
The question is whether this more trepid approach will foster the innovation and excitement Facebook spawned when gave the go-ahead to developers last year.
Clearly, LinkedIn and Facebook have different goals. Facebook is something of a come-one, come-all site for individuals to strike up friendships and trade news with existing pals. LinkedIn has the greater demure of a place for business and has made setting up links with other people more arduous.
In that sense, it doesn’t want the same kind of free-for-all that has been created by Facebook apps, many of which remain frivolous tools with little productive value.
“I really do think LinkedIn is being smart by focusing on the utility of applications,” said Mike La Rotonda, CEO of Votigo, a company that helps corporations write applications for social-networking sites. LinkedIn is said to keep tight control over what gets on board by requiring developers to submit their ideas before an app is approved.
But innovation is unpredictable and difficult to foresee. And it comes through experimentation. From the prospective of growth, “I think they are making a little mistake,” said Harrison Tang, co-founder of Spokeo, an aggregator of social networking sites for consumers. “It’s not very enticing for third-party developers to develop on that platform.”
Clearly no one can tell yet whether the LinkedIn applications program will be a success, or whether a vibrant community of programmers will evolve. But one thing seems to be in LinkedIn’s favor.
The opportunity for an application to sell advertising is attractive on the site given the business demographics of many LinkedIn members, said La Rotonda.
