Slashdot Mirror
LinkedIn Restricts API Usage
mpicpp points out LinkedIn's new API policy. "LinkedIn is restricting access to most of its application programming interfaces (APIs) to companies that have struck up partnerships with the social networking company. 'Over the past several years, we've seen some exciting applications from our developer community. While many delivered value back to our members and LinkedIn, not all have,' wrote Adam Trachtenberg, director of the LinkedIn developer network, explaining in a blog post the change in the company's API policy. Starting May 12, LinkedIn will only offer a handful of its APIs for general use, namely those that allow users and companies to post information about themselves on the service. After then, only companies that have enrolled in LinkedIn's partner program will have API access. Samsung, WeChat, and Evernote have already struck such partnerships. Currently, the social networking service offers a wide range of APIs, which allow third-party programs to draw content from, and place content into, LinkedIn. APIs have been seen as an additional channel for businesses to interact with their users and partners. A few companies, however, have recently scaled back access to APIs, which provide the programmatic ability to access a company's services and data. Netflix shut its public API channel in November, preferring to channel its user information through a small number of partners. ESPN also disabled public access to its APIs in December. LinkedIn's move is evidence of how the business use of APIs are evolving, said John Musser, founder and CEO at API Science, which offers an API performance testing service."
closes its API . How many slashdotters have a linkedin / facebook account ? just wondering ..
You mean they've been handing out their users data via API? And suddenly they've realized that this is a bad idea? 'GetPeople By Connection ID', 'Search people' etc.???
Google handed access to an my email to Line, I gave Line a separate email account on a separate tablet, there was no contact information in the Google account I used for that tablet, there was no emails in it, it was clean, the telephone number used was new.
So Line should have had *no* access to any of my private data, the permission I gave it didn't extend to other accounts or other tablets, and yet when I clicked 'send invitation by email' it listed all the email addresses I'd contacted on this separate account not on that tablet. How? I assume Google linked the accounts and gave the data also for the other account.
So I think Google (and perhaps Yahoo) are pissing my private data to every app that asks for a few permissions on any Android tablet on any account it links to me. And apps like Line are grabbing it all.
Time to dump Android, ditching Google and only keeping a fake Google account for a tablet doesn't seem to be enough.
I've often wondered how they pay the bills, I'm guessing it is selling the data you're giving it to some interested party.
Why would anybody care about Linkedin?
I am surprised that Linkedin still exists.
Why people share any important information with a company that lacks any concept of ethics is beyond my comprehension.
...that bloody LinkedIn would stop spamming my mail box with fictitious contacts from people I've never had anything to do with.
Why the hell they think they have some right to use my address when I've never had anything whatsoever to do with them I don't know.
Next time a client asks me to have a 'most recent post' from LinkedIn embedded on their web page (yes, this happens), I'll just be able to tell them that LinkedIn don't allow it.
FTA:
No, that's no typical at all. More typical would be to start charging for a previously free service. Cutting off access to a service which attracts people to your business is hardly a good way to "monetize the audience [you] have gained". It's more of a good way to lose business.
This is the decision of a dim-witted suit, and no doubt once LinkedIn realise it's a stupid move he'll be long gone with his performance bonus securely trousered.
The Internet was founded upon the idea of open interoperation between all endpoints and federation between different instances of the same service protocol (think of SMTP and globally interoperating MTAs). These concepts were so fundamental that they are mentioned explicitly in the IETF Mission Statement as their central goal.
Then Big Business came along, and they didn't like the concept of a level playing field of unhindered interoperation and federation. Now almost every large corporation is trying to fence off their little corner of the Internet into a private realm which they guard jealously. Other companies are denied interoperation unless they pay up (or it's denied entirely), and federation between like services is virtually unknown. There is no "Facebook service" which anyone can install and then be able to federate their content to and from Facebook as peers.
Virtually all of the megacorps today are behaving this way: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and so on. They all hate the open Internet, and have closed it off at the application layers of the protocol stack so that you have to be an enrolled member of their private realm to participate. The closing of APIs is par for the course as they don't want interoperation, and federation even less. TFS is spot on.
At least we still have federated SMTP and unrestricted search engines, although probably that's only because they're data mining our email and search queries. It's no longer the open Internet we once had, but more a system of feudal lords and their private domains, and everyone else is a peasant.
It's a severe regression of Internet utility, and it's of benefit only to them.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Online companies that cut off their API to the users may think that by doing so they can squeeze more moolah from their userbase
They are wrong
By cutting / restricting their API to only a chosen few these online companies are cutting their own noses to spike their own fugly faces !
Userbase is a fluid thing, and users can (and constantly) move from one site to another
Right now there is no challenger to Linkedin, so their 'userbase' for now, is still stable - but it doesn't mean that there won't be someone setting up a more attractive and useful site than Linkedin in the future
FB / ESPN / Netflix and Linkedin are becoming arrogant - but their arrogance will hit back to them, sooner or later
I deleted my LinkedIN account because I kept getting hidden views or whatever they call it. Normally you can see who has viewed your profile, but I would get several hits and I couldn't tell.
I had a lot of information up there, and now I'm concerned that someone linked up data from a variety of sources to steal my identity. When you think about it, you can get a few answers off of a LinkedIN profile that credit bureaus ask when accessing your profile.
In that respect, LinkedIN is worse than FaceBook - which I never did.
The only reason why I even created a LinkedIN profile was because many companies do all of their recruiting there.
And even then, up there, you are your last job. Had to take a support job to make ends meet because IBM closed your whole branch down (Boca, Atlanta, etc ..) even though you have a decade of C/C++ OS development and systems experience, well, you are forever dubbed a support guy.
I love computers and CS, but I really hate this industry.
A business who wants to grow it's customer base would want to give out API's to provide a symbiotic relationship with their customer base.
By locking down their API's down to API's which people can use to increase the value of their brand, they are showing their true colours.
I feel ashamed for having a linked in profile. I don't really feel too "linked in" anymore...
So for $12000 a year they've sold your details to any one who wants it, governments, corporate spies, competitor malicious actors, headhunters seeking to disrupt projects, political lobbyists, scum, identity thieves, scammers, everyone.
Nobody thinks when they sign up for these services, that not only are they providing private and competitive data connecting to their friends and workmates but to every malicious actor on the planet.
This is one of the walls around the walled garden. Apple controls what apps you may have, Comcast decides which websites you can go to. Facebook and LinkedIn decide what you can do on the internet, and the FBI makes sure you stay in the garden.
No surprises.
And nothing of value was lost.
Who uses or cares about LinkedIn? Every single professional I know that has one, doesn't do anything with it except delete the spam they get emailed.
You appear to imply that marketing has little utility. If you are offering a product for sale, and no one knows it exists, why are you spending what it costs to offer a product?
LinkedIn has improved greatly when they added the block button, and I am not sure how they thought they could have a functional social media site without such a basic function.
Literally the day that they added the block function I went around and blocked a bunch of people from a couple of previous contracts that had been (provably because I have a premium account and can see who is looking at me when they look.) checking my account and then calling my current work and trash talking me which a bunch of crap about my time at that job (which was years in the past at the time. Some people in management can be hooked on revenge I guess.)
I blocked a few bad customers, and I noted that when I applied for jobs after that, I got significantly more interviews. I would hate to think that I would not get considered for a position if some random manager called out of the blue and just randomly started trash talking me unprompted. It pretty much stopped cold when these bad actors lost the ability to even see my account. I also don't update until I leave a job, which makes actual sense because, The LinkedIn stalker types can't see where I currently work and the recruiters that would be interested in talking to me can contact me without being dismayed by my being in a (Most likely) more senior or high paying position currently.
I need to do a sanity check on your numbers. The U.S. population is just over 300 million, including all ages, jobs, employed, unemployed, retired, disabled, imprisoned, with or without internet, etc. Out of this entire number, you are claiming that 1/3 are on linked in? That would mean that the majority of people that have jobs, have a LinkedIn account and I find that very hard to believe.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey