LinkedIn Adds New Collaboration Apps

LinkedIn, a social networking site aimed at business professionals, has released a number of new applications today as part of a movement to get users to incorporate LinkedIn into their daily lives.

LinkedIn users now have eight new apps to lure them to the LinkedIn Web site. With the apps, users can share recommended reads, upload and share files, view presentations, track colleagues' business travel, connect to their blogs, and see what people are saying about their companies on Twitter.

"LinkedIn Applications enable you to enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective. Applications are added to your homepage and profile enabling you to control who gets access to what information," said LinkedIn on its applications page.

LinkedIn's VP of platform products, Jamie Templeton, said the new apps recognize that LinkedIn members typically are short on time and not interested in entertainment, Reuters reported.

The apps are also intended to help facilitate users' work life -- for instance, the Huddle Workspaces app gives users "private, secure online workspaces" with a whole set of collaboration tools for team projects.

"What you're looking at here is really collaboration infrastructure for companies," said Patrick Crane, LinkedIn's vice president of marketing, Reuters reported.

Crane also told Reuters that LinkedIn thinks that while larger corporations may be hesitant to have employees collaborate via LinkedIn, the company expects small and medium-sized businesses to embrace the opportunity.