How we would like to work with LinkedIn and their upcoming API
I've been a strong proponent of LinkedIn and find great utility in it. I've also complained vocally about all the things I wish it did, but doesn't. I guess that's what happens when you gain the kind of traction …
Context & Ripple Effects
LinkedIn has spent 2007 telegraphing a platform play: it told developers in June that an API was coming, and by October CEO Dan Nye was describing a model that copies Facebook's developer underpinnings while explicitly refusing the free-for-all — no frivolous 'food fight' apps, with a platform promised within 9 to 12 months. That positioning is what makes this post interesting: it is a developer writing a public requirements doc before the API exists.
The timing matters because LinkedIn's momentum was real but contested — Hitwise had its traffic up 323% year-over-year even as one prominent blogger declared he no longer saw value in it after months on Facebook. Path 101's post, picked up the same day by Fred Wilson at A VC while liveblogging a startup, shows where the professional-network developer community thinks the opportunity lies: utility, not widgets.
First-order effects
- Developers like Path 101 now have a concrete channel to shape LinkedIn's API scope ahead of launch — their wishlists become de facto requirements documents for a platform Dan Nye has said will arrive within 9 to 12 months.
- LinkedIn's stated refusal of 'food fight' apps means the first wave of third-party integrations will be screened for business utility, filtering out exactly the viral-game category that made Facebook's 2007 platform explode.
Second-order effects
- Recruiting, CRM, and reference-checking tools gain a potential distribution path into a network whose users hold professional data — adjacent software vendors now compete to be among the curated first partners rather than racing to ship anything.
- Facebook's open platform sets the benchmark LinkedIn must argue against; if curated openness underdelivers on developer enthusiasm, the same bloggers praising the API plans today have already shown they defect quickly when perceived value stalls.
Third-order effects
- The episode crystallizes the emerging split between open social platforms optimized for engagement and professional networks that treat the social graph as gated infrastructure — who controls access to identity and relationship data becomes the strategic fault line.
- If the curated-platform pattern holds across business networks, developer programs become partnership negotiations rather than free markets, concentrating integration opportunities in a few approved tools.
The trend: Professional networks are opening their platforms selectively, trading Facebook-style viral openness for controlled, utility-driven developer access to the business social graph.