The problem is that Linkedin is the best source of data about edges and nodes of professional networks. There was and there is no mass-market alternative. So if you wanted to make an application using professional graph data there was no alternative.
As a long-term linkedin member, I never liked the company. They simply don't care about their users.
While we are able to act on our free(arguably) will in the confinement of the linkedin walled garden, we are still users. Used and abused(heh) users, but nevertheless.
I wonder who will be the linkedin killer. I certainly would like to see a decentralized network of websites with each project maximizing value for its customer segment, freeing that audience from linkedin choke. There is so much innovation lying dormant in the professional graphs, I can't believe we are stuck in this incredibly inefficient local optima.
They're already starting to lock down all the data that was originally Creative Commons. They've stopped allowing you to download snapshots as spreadsheets, and generally hobbled the API.
I learned about the API change a few weeks ago from a buddy who works at LinkedIn. He said the old API was a complete horror ("evolved over a long period in an uncontrolled fashion") and no longer even matched what was going on at the back end. I do know a lot of it was flakey.
This friend is a developer and was excited about the change -- I am sure he had no idea about the terms that marketing attached to the new API and will have to see what he thinks. I also wonder what the company is really trying to do by being so restrictive.
Linkedin has never really made a lot of sense to me as a business -- I use it to look people up before meeting with them to see what we might have in common, but apart from that I don't understand how they function. But the people I know who work there seem fanatical about it, and they do rake in a lot of money.
This just further demonstrates the need for an open data platform that is not specific to some specific set of data. That is; a generic system that is user driven, allowing for varying complex views of standardized data sets.
Such a system would put all of these generic "social sites" out of business because it could be maintained by the users rather than the greedy data hoarding companies.
One nitpick: The title on this is not accurate because they are not closing to individual developers for general API usage, just for specific parts of their data.
I would say that it's more accurate to say that they're shutting down all access except for a few extremely narrow use cases.
With this change, essentially the only thing you can do with the LinkedIn API is post updates, and retrieve information about the logged in user. Easily 95% of the utility of the API has been removed with this change.
Is there anybody we can contact to get clarity on whether a specific use case will still be allowed (without having to go through their approval process)? I didn't see any contact listed.
More specifically, they mention that the following endpoint will still be available:
Companies API — /v1/companies/{id}
Users should boycott. Or at least developers should do at least. I had a paid account and I'm not gonna renew. Keeping apps away from my data is not something I will tolerate. I think LinkedIn needs us more than we need LinkedIn. The whole "networking" promise of LinkedIn is false - it's mostly nagging recruiters who can't even read you resume right.
True, but you would still have third parties giving an experience you wouldn't be able to control.
I didn't think this was a problem for LinkedIn. They may be trying to ratchet in the APIs in an attempt to protect their core value, which is user employment data.
Most developers already knew about this I suppose. We just partnered with them about 4 months ago and have been working closely with them in preparing our platform for this coming change. It's not news to us.
