LinkedIn: Tear Down This Wall

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Apple has an open developer's platform for the iPhone, of course. Facebook has a developer's platform for writing apps, as well. Ditto for Twitter, Google Android, Blackberry, and Salesforce.com. LinkedIn finally gets it. Mind you, fifty million users are nothing to sneeze at (unless you are Facebok with 300 million users - Meow!).

LinkedIn, as promised, has opened up its developer's platform this week to outside programmers to write applications. Tweetdeck and Microsoft, for example, are both wasting no time.

Tweetdeck has already promised that it will be adding a LinkedIn app in its next release. Microsoft says it will use LinkedIn within its new Outlook 2010 social connector release coming out in a few months.

LinkedIn, I have been worried about you. I personally haven't looked at my profile on your site in months (Plaxo, for you it's been even longer). I think you need help. Hopefully this will put you back in the game.

I really want LinkedIn to succeed. I think we need a powerhouse social network that is strictly business. As much as I love Facebook, I do struggle with the overshare issue of my personal life with professional "friends".

Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987.