LinkedIn Announces New Platform

LinkedIn announces new platform Wednesday for its business-focused social networking site. LinkedIn’s new platform will offer websites and developers easy tools to embed LinkedIn “recommend” buttons, company-profile boxes and contact widgets on third-party websites. LinkedIn will also provide a way to log in to other sites using LinkedIn.

Among the offerings:

A Share button that posts a link to a page or news story to the user’s feed on LinkedIn.
A Recommend button to give a vote to a product you like.
Member profile widgets that show the LinkedIn profile of a company executive or website owner.

LinkedIn’s Share button joins a growing number of plugins that try to get users to spread the news about a site or news story, a pantheon that includes Facebook’s Like, Twitter’s Tweet button, and social voting and submission widgets from Digg and Reddit.

According to an article on Wired.com regarding LinkedIn announces new platform:

Calling it “a new platform for building the professional web,” LinkedIn is seeking to challenge Facebook’s growing control over online identity. Once just a site for sharing photos and updates with friends, Facebook has woven itself into the fabric of the net with its Open Graph platform, that lets other websites embed Facebook widgets, install “Like” buttons, plug-in a commenting system, and let users log in with their Facebook credentials. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/04/linked-in-platform/

The company is preparing for an IPO, has users that have proven they will pay for extra benefits, and these bold new platforms can extend the power of LinkedIn’s focus on business and allow it to grow into a powerful competitor to Facebook. It would be the “real world” site that people graduate to, from the college fun of Facebook.

As LinkedIn announces new platform, changes, and improvements in the future, Black Box Social Media will be there.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Article: LinkedIn Announces New Platform

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