

LinkedIn Announces New Platform - gammarator
http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/04/06/linkedin-developer-platform/

======
jpcx01
Having fought LinkedIn's APIs and dealt with their crappy developer support,
I'd like to give a very big warning to anyone who might be thinking about
using their platform.

1) Their terms of use is unbelievably narrow. They own everything, and it's up
to their discretion whether they think you are a competitor and can shut of
your data access

2) Took them _forever_ to get SSL support for their widgets. Despite tons of
dev requests for it, they seemed to actively fight against it. Really friggin
bizarre.

~~~
atrachtenberg
1) The goal is to enable great apps that don't damage our ecosystem. This
creates a healthy environment where everyone is happy and wants to continue
investment.

If we didn't want people to build apps, we never would have launched a
platform. If we're shutting people off for no good reason, it is a waste of
our time and yours. But we would be foolish not let us protect ourselves from
people actively causing harm.

2) There was a reason the platform was labeled as "Early Access" before today:
there were key pieces missing, such as SSL support.

We always wanted to have SSL, but it was later on the roadmap than shipping
code that worked over HTTP. SSL isn't trivial when using a CDN. It's not an
unsolved problem, but we wanted to do it in a solid fashion, and that took
time when balanced with other features we were building.

~~~
yesimahuman
I have also built for the LinkedIn API. The TOS is very unnerving and I
personally wouldn't build any kind of business on it. LinkedIn has a lot of
good data but they own it, and developers have to come to terms with that. I
think LinkedIn rests on a gold mine of business intelligence data that they
are using much too lightly.

~~~
phlux
This is probably exactly why they act the way they do: they know the data is a
goldmine and they want to protect that resource. Create a very narrow TOS and
await ideas from the developer community such that they get a good idea of
what to build on that data in the future.

------
gerner
does point 1.8 in their API TOS seem strange to anyone else?

"1.8 Monitoring. You agree to provide us with access to your Application
and/or other materials related to your use...If, following the foregoing,
LinkedIn is not satisfied that full compliance has been demonstrated...
LinkedIn may perform an audit of materials at your premises to verify your
compliance with these Terms."

Is LinkedIn suggesting that they get to look at your source code and other
plans (biz plans) if they think you might be competing with them (another,
standard, TOS bullet point)? Is this enforceable? Does it matter?

EDIT: here's the TOS link: <http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1013>

~~~
gerner
To help fuel a (I hope helpful) discussion (but seriously, I'm looking for
advice/opinions here):

I think it's unenforceable. Ultimately LinkedIn can shut off your access, but
that's really the only recourse they've got if they don't like what you're
doing, unless you're breaking some other more well respected rule (like
copyright, trademark...)

I also suspect that they're extremely unlikely to try anything else since it's
irritating for them to do anything else.

That said, if you're a startup and you (in LinkedIn's eyes which is the only
thing that matters) violate their TOS, and they do decide to go after you
under section 1.8, you have to cave, how could you fight it?

But IANAL.

------
daemon0
Checkout the very cool JS developer console.
<http://developer.linkedinlabs.com/jsapi-console>

------
JangoSteve
For anyone using the new JS API, I'd like to reiterate this post [1]. Just
like Facebook, and Twitter, and countless others, they are telling you to add
their widget to your page in a way that can seriously slow down your site's
load speed.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771607>

~~~
jakobo
Reading the docs, you'd see there's support for a non blocking option. I've
created the sample code for you from the JS Console at
developer.linkedinlabs.com: <http://bit.ly/hkIlKk>

------
bradhe
There's another thread on the RRW write up on this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2415376> \-- I'm just going to copypasta
some of my comment from there (with a minor edit).

"My knee-jerk reaction was 'LinkedIn -- ASSIMILATE! You don't need a platform
too.' but there are areas where LinkedIn can still provide value. I like the
concept of Facebook being your online profile so perhaps LinkedIn can be your
professional online profile?

That Recommend button, one of the things about LinkedIn recommendations is
that they're rather exclusive -- if you get something recommended or receive a
recommendation on LinkedIn, that's kind of a big deal it seems! But if you
lower the barrier to entry by just allowing the users to...click a
button...then doesn't that take away some of the exclusivity?"

In a sense, I almost feel bad for LN but they're a pretty scrappy company I
think. It's kind of like they've been trying to play catch-up since they
launched -- they've been plagued with UX issues (still are, IMHO), they have a
lot of stability problems, and it's only recently (read: last year, maybe two)
that they've been able to overcome their chicken/egg problem. I don't frequent
LN, but I find myself being drawn back to that site more and more.

~~~
gacba
I wouldn't suggest LinkedIn recommendations are all that exclusive today...The
way it usually works is that you ask Sue for a recommendation after giving her
one (per the way LinkedIn promotes it). It's always tete-a-tete, so in my mind
the recommendations are not as valuable as they appear on the surface.

One way recommendations would be more valuable, otherwise it's like saying,
"Yep, Sue & I are friends so we gave each other good marks for working
together..."

~~~
irickt
Pedantic: Maybe you meant to say tit for tat. Tête-à-tête, literally head to
head, is a meeting or conversation.

------
csel
Does this mean I get to have yet another Share button next to 7 others on my
website?

~~~
mtopper
Yeah but this one will get used by more people than most of those other 7.
Like this article: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/06/us-blockbuster-
dis...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/06/us-blockbuster-dishnetwork-
idUSTRE7351VA20110406)

------
codenerdz
Does anyone know if linked in now allows access to public information over
api. Previously due to API rate limits, you could only get (publicly
available) information about a person if he went through oauth process.
Whereas for other oauth api vendors, such as github for instance, you only
need to have your(developer) api access setup and you can search for
publically available information without bothering end users to authenticate

------
joeybaker
Huge for B2B business that need to run things like a channel program with
logins. Not to mention, the amount of data that just got exposed is insanely
valuable. Mashups here we come.

------
bdhe
Can someone elaborate on what it means to share a website over LinkedIn?

~~~
daemon0
I would assume that means your link / article is displayed in your LinkedIn
status updates and in addition to being seen by your connections its's picked-
up by the LinkedIn Today News product <http://linkedin.com/today>

------
lux
Looks remarkably similar to Facebook's platform. If I'm going to take an
interest in a new platform, it ought to bring something new to the table, not
just "we do that too now, so connect to ours instead."

~~~
tmcneal
Isn't the value of the API in the data you're retrieving, not the design or
feature-functions of the API?

I'd think that your choice of integration between Facebook or LinkedIn (or
both) would be based on your intended audience.

~~~
lux
Good point. I'd still like to see them bring something new to the table. Their
embeddable widgets are literal copies of Facebook's widgets, for example. I
wonder what additional value they could create by being original and not
simply reacting to competition.

