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LinkedIn: A New Must-Have App For iPhone

Written by Sarah Perez / August 21, 2008 6:58 AM / 10 Comments

The iPhone has been making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of its business users, too.

Today, we're introduced to what hopefully will continue the trend of more "serious" apps for iPhone: LinkedIn.

The new LinkedIn app for iPhone launched today in the iPhone store. The app itself is simple, but VentureBeat thinks simple is perfect. We have to agree. Business apps don't need to overly complex or feature-rich necessarily - they just need to provide you with quick and easy access to information and data.

The LinkedIn App

The app features four different sections: the main page, connections, search, and status:

  • The main page of the iPhone app displays a news feed that shows updates from your LinkedIn contacts - things like whether they've updated their profile, changed positions, asked a question, added a new contact, etc.

  • The "Connections" section displays your LinkedIn contacts in a way that's very much like the iPhone's built-in contact list.

  • From the "Search" section, you can search for contacts by name, keyword, title, or company.

  • The "Status" section allows you to update your LinkedIn status, which many people use to announce what they're working on. Others have this hooked up via Ping.fm or a similar app so it's updated with their latest tweet.

However, one of the app's best features is its ability to copy LinkedIn contacts over to the contact list on your phone itself. You can download the app from the iPhone store here.

Business Apps Rock, Too

Although a lot of the focus in the blogosphere has been on "fun" apps, like Twitter clients, games, and social networking apps from Facebook and MySpace, the iPhone is offers a lot of apps for business users, too. In the business section of the app store, there are three pages of apps that include everything from virtual rolodexes to time trackers to expense recorders and various calculators. There are even IT-focused apps like VNC clients and command prompt tools. Yet, there could be so many more apps available here.

When you think of the types of businesses there are today, you realize that there's potential for that business category to explode with apps. It could be subdivided into numerous sections focusing on the different types of business users: sales, marketing, retail, accounting, executives, HR, IT, real estate....the list could go on and on. The LinkedIn app holds universal appeal for anyone anyone who works for a living, but more importantly, we hope that, through its adoption, developers will see the potential for building iPhone apps for business as well.


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  1. This looks great. Thanks for posting, as I probably would have missed it otherwise.


    Posted by: Spencer | August 21, 2008 7:46 AM



  2. Cool! Any way to get this on a jailbroken iPhone?

    Posted by: Hao Chen | August 21, 2008 7:47 AM



  3. Hao Chen you should be able to simply download it from the App Store.

    Posted by: Corvida | August 21, 2008 7:55 AM



  4. It seems ok, but LinkedIn really isn't something that changes on a pace where I'd feel the need to check it on my phone

    Posted by: Jason Carreira Posted on FriendFeed   | August 21, 2008 8:16 AM



  5. I'm still rockin' the 1.1.4.

    Posted by: Hao Chen | August 21, 2008 8:23 AM



  6. Hmm, I tried this app but wasn't terribly impressed. Then again, I'm not much of an active LinkedIn user, so I guess I didn't have many expectations to begin with, but I noticed that the Facebookesque "Newsfeed" for me was really (really!) boring... it listed a friend of mine who'd recently added 15 contacts... INDIVIDUALLY. Ugh, no value.

    I also found the app abysmally slow. Maybe it's because I'm in the 500+ contact category? Then again, you'd think it'd be designed for hyper-networkers...

    Lastly, I extracted all the URLs from the app and noticed some weird ones, like a link to the wiki for the OAuth Summit yet the app still asks for your username and password. Are they just teasing me?!

    Posted by: factoryjoe.com Author Profile Page | August 21, 2008 11:49 AM



  7. So, what you're saying is that LinkedIn is a "Must-Have App" for business users. Well, since the majority of iPhone users aren't "business users" I'm willing to bet that LinkedIn is only a "Must-Have App" for about 10% of iPhone users. By my standards I wouldn't consider that a "Must-Have App" maybe more of a "good app" or an "interesting app."

    Posted by: Michael | August 21, 2008 12:14 PM



  8. I think business cards are going the way of the fountain pen: a stylish luxury.

    Posted by: Meryn Stol Posted on FriendFeed   | August 21, 2008 2:49 PM



  9. Sarah - imagine a LinkedIn app on the Blackberry! Business info on your finger tips for business users.

    Posted by: Mrinal Author Profile Page | August 21, 2008 6:26 PM



  10. FINALLY!! A company that understands Web 2.0 business strategy in true form. Sticking online versions of tools into web apps offers no user benefit, and only causes frustration, but it really looks like linkedin have got this one right: The proof is in the pudding though.

    http://business-vs-technology.blogspot.com/

    Posted by: Aziz Musa | August 22, 2008 8:47 AM




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