LinkedIn Platform launch
blog.linkedin.com
blog.linkedin.com
Restrictions like
h Charge, directly or indirectly, any incremental fees (including any unique, specific, or premium charges) for access to LinkedIn’s Content or your integration of the APIs in your Application;
or
i. Use the Content in any advertisements or for purposes of targeting advertisements (whether such advertisement appear in your Application or elsewhere);
or
m Use the APIs in an Application that competes with products or services offered by us;
Those are a big red flag, and tell me that LinkedIn is not serious about open participation. It seems that they fear the possibility of one of their API users making money without giving them a cut. This makes their API deeply unattractive to me, what if I have some success w/ my app and they decide to do something like it.
It seems like they would be happy to shoot partner apps in the head in order to eat their lunch. And that means that linkedin api integration takes a back seat to pretty much anyone elses.
However it's not as good as it seems:
1. There is no support for contact details like phone-number, email etc.
2. The API is read-only, and that sort of beats the purpose of this API.
(At least judging from the limited documentation available at the moment.)
It looks to me like there are write operations for status, activity stream, friend invitations, and direct messaging. I'm not too surprised that LinkedIn does not offer all the contact details.
Phew. This documentation is organized in a somewhat annoying fashion.
Imaging Google not allowing you to see the email address via their ContactsAPI, that wouldn't make sense...
Too little, too late. From my experience, linkedin has lost a bit of steam over the last 6 months or so. I used to check the site regularly, update contacts, join discussions, etc. but have not done so lately.
I was initially excited by the first release of API but was disappointed after digging into it a bit. Having to apply etc. just killed it for me (I eventually got accepted but by that point had no interest). This release is more of the same and is rather limited as spif points out.