LinkedIn Jumps on Board with Applications

LinkedIn announced today that it’s added an applications feature inside the wildly-popular business social networking site. This means you can now add interactive functionality to spice up your personal profile page and hopefully drive more awareness on the site. Initial applications include WordPress (for embedding blog posts into your profile), Reading List from Amazon (share your favorite books), Box.net (for sharing files), SlideShare (for sharing documents), and several others. I would expect this application pool to grow extensively over the upcoming months.

Personally, I’ve not used LinkedIn as extensively as I have in the past because of my growing interest in Facebook.  For me, Facebook has been a much more intimate affair and effective means of communicating while LinkedIn has always seemed a bit cold and distant. Sure, I have my 500+ contacts but aside from an occasional update, I don’t interact with these folks through LinkedIn.  My hope is with the new LinkedIn applications functionality I will gain benefits that cannot be obtained through Facebook and therefore increase LinkedIn’s relevance for me.