Now LinkedIn Will Be Featured in a Lot More Apps
November 24, 2009
LinkedIn has opened up its platform to developers. It can be accessed at developer.linkedin.com.
"Over fifty million users entrust their professional identities and relationships with LinkedIn, helping build LinkedIn into the largest global professional network today," says LinkedIn' Adam Nash. "However, professionals around the world use a wide variety of applications and Web sites to get their work done, and they have spoken loud and clear that they want the ability to leverage their professional networks wherever they work."
Now developers can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications. LinkedIn's developer site has APIs and widgets.
"Over the past months, LinkedIn has supported integrations with some of the most prominent and critical software applications in the enterprise," says Nash. "Partnerships with companies like IBM, Blackberry (Research in Motion), and most recently Microsoft, have given us time to invest in both functionality and scalability of the platform."
Developers interested in using LinkedIn in their apps need only fill out a form at the site. The LinkedIn platform leverages the open OAuth standard, so integrations should be that much more simple.
On a related note, Twitter client TweetDeck is already utilzing the LinkedIn platform. They just announced that you can view or take action on your LinkedIn network updates from within the TweetDeck application.
It should be interesting to see the kinds of apps that start taking advantage of LinkedIn's APIs. This could turn out to be a very significant event for increasing business networking, and even matching prospective job candidates with jobs.
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Businesses Increasingly Looking to iPhone Apps
July 30, 2009
iPhoneAppQuotes, which puts businesses together with iPhone developers, has released some interesting findings. The company has noticed a shift in app development trends.
"Business apps are proving to be the most popular category of apps as entrepreneurs and small businesses realize the marketing and additional revenue stream potential the iPhone creates," says Founder Gregg Weiss.
Some of iPhoneAppsQuotes' findings include:
- Medical, education, business and book applications are the most popular development requests
- In the first quarter of 2009, there was a 50 / 50 split between business versus consumer application request for development
- In the second quarter, business applications have increased by 30 percent, resulting in a 70 / 30 split
- Request for quotes to develop new iPhone applications are up 20 percent from May to June 2009
- Requests for game iPhone application development dropped by roughly 10 percent, and the development of new music applications are experiencing a steep decline
- The initiation of new weather, sports and photography have slowed to a near standstill
"Apps are now available world wide in 77 countries," says Weiss. "With the recent news from Apple CEO Steve Jobs announcing last quarter, 5.2 million iPhones were sold, a 626 percent increase from a year ago, the customer base for iPhone apps is growing rapidly."
"The key thing to take away from these statistics is that developing an iPhone app can create a very lucrative business for not only businesses and software developers, but also for regular Joe's that have a fantastic concept," he adds.
It is unclear whether the information reported by iPhoneAppsQuotes is representative of the iPhone App industry at large, or simply of the apps and developers involved with the company's own network. Either way, it is clear that more businesses are looking to find new ways to utilize the app market for the incredibly popular smartphone.
