LinkedIn Announces New Platform | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn Announces New Platform

blog.linkedin.com

103 pointsgammarator28 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

1) It is funny you say this, because that is how most platforms are. Look at Apple, Twitter or Microsoft. Not to say your warning isn't justified, but it is part of the game that is played when dealing with 3rd party platforms. They introduce them to bolster their own networks, and if they don't like what you are doing, or feel that you are competition, they will force you out one way or another.

Welcome to the brave new mobile/cloud world, where everyone has to ask permission from everybody before anything gets implemented.

To be fair, some of these APIs expose data sets and user bases that we couldn't have dreamed of accessing ten years ago. It sucks when we get locked out by the API provider, but the availability of these APIs has transformed what a single developer or small team can create.

I can empathize with the frustration, but it definitely makes sense for LinkedIn. Unlike Facebook (which also has difficulties for development), LinkedIn has many monetization strategies besides advertising. They must be strategically very careful not to let anyone else monetize their professional network graph.

They are only opening up in response to Facebook and to attract more people to the site.

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

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.

I think they are saying that you will allow them to log into your application and check it out if it's password protected.

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

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

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

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.

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..."

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

I think he's referring to the product recommendation button, not the "person recommendation" feature that's been around for a long time

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

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...

In the Darwinian world of Share buttons, many shall fall until a handful of the hardiest remain.

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

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.

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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