LinkedIn applications went live Tuesday night, “productivity applications” that let you share business information with your network.
This is not your father’s LinkedIn! Nor is it a Facebook clone — these applications are clearly business-related: share large files with Box.net, show the world what Twitter companies or phrases you are tracking, embed presentations with Slideshare.net or Google Presentation, create a private workspace with Huddle. You can also add blog posts to your LinkedIn profile (a la Facebook), advertise what you’re reading via Amazon Reading Lists or share your travels (TripIt).
The big question: how well do they work?
Initial reports suggest some bugs, but hey, the apps are “beta”! (Life is now permanently beta, thank you, Gina Neff.) That said, I had zero problems integrating my existing Slideshare account into my LinkedIn account.
The Industry Standards says that they are “too little, too late” and wonders about the closed API. I don’t know about you, but I find most of the Facebook applications enabled by an open API to be… timewasters.
What I like about the LinkedIn apps is that they allow me to (hopefully, easily) integrate content that I have created at other sites, content that is related my business network. Or my “resume,” as the ReadWriteWeb notes. I think The Industry Standard is too enamored of “one size fits all” — a model that doesn’t work in the offline world so why in the world would it work in the online world?
