So we have teenagers on Bebo and Myspace, students and young aspiring socialites on Facebook and professionals on LinkedIn. The world divides into social clubs. They are all trying new things with degrees of success or in the case of Beacon and Facebook failure. LinkedIn, which was the fastest-growing social network in October, attracting over 17 million registered users globally and about 5 million unique visitors in the US.
Now LinkedIn has opened up outside software developers, starting with BusinessWeek magazine. LinkedIn’s aim to migrate from an online contacts and referral database into an indispensable daily tool for business users. It is also participating, along with MySpace, in Google Inc's OpenSocial developer network that seeks to create a way for all developers to write software that will work on all platforms. MySpace is also a member of OpenSocial.
McGraw-Hill's BusinessWeek will link keywords, such as company names, to the LinkedIn service. Visitors to the BusinessWeek site, who place their mouse pointers over certain keywords will trigger a pop-up box detailing how many of their LinkedIn contacts are related to the company or keyword. Unlike Facebook LinkedIn win have greater control over what developers do on the service and thereby avoid it being taking over by some of the less useful and frivolous developments that have found themselves on Facebook.
The latest rumour is that LinkedIn may soon be acquired by News Corp and would make a logical sister for the recently acquired Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co Inc this week.
