LinkedIn’s new apps are all work, but don’t work

LinkedIn adds apps in a move that seems to ape Facebook, but are strictly professional. The only problem is, they don’t work.

I am an avid LinkedIn new follower and Google Alerts gives me several stories a day to digest. Recently, I read a few bemoaning the way in which LinkedIn seems not to have developed any in spite of recent investments. Today, the soothsayers were silenced by a radical new addition to the LinkedIn business networking service: applications.

Now, if you’re thinking Facebook applications you will no doubt be delighted to read that sheep throwing and movie quizzes will not be something you have have to engage in with business contacts alongside your Facebook friends. LinkedIn’s applications are “productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn” says founder and CEO Reid Hoffman in his blog.

Most are provided by external companies who have adapted their own services so they can run inside LinkedIn, but one developed by LinkedIn itself is Company Buzz. This tool enables you to see what is being said on Twitter about your company. It may be many people’s first foray into social media monitoring and if you ignore the fact that LinkedIn’s 30 million users are likely to be saying more about your company than Twitter’s 3 million users, it sounds like a useful application.

The problem is, it doesn’t work.

I just tried to add Company Buzz to my own LinkedIn profile and I got a message back saying it has technical difficulties.

Even when it does get to work, I am unsure how it actually is going to give me what it promises. LinkedIn says my Company Group is “Entel”, which is, in fact, a truncated version of one of my company names and not a company I work for at all (I already get irrelevant news headlines each time I log in). It completely ignores my current WeCanDo.BIZ entry. So when it does start to work I have a feeling it will be showing me Twitter entries for a company I don’t work for, and neither of the two I do.

Perhaps the real point is though, will these apps be enough to get the 30 million registered users coming back regularly?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz