8 ms·

Tell HN: LinkedIn's API will be restricted next week

78 points by zthomas 11y ago

LinkedIn will be drastically limiting their API next week. The grace period ends on May 12th. https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition One of the major restrictions is limiting the access of the r_fullprofile fields to only explicit LinkedIn partners. This is used by a lot of startups to create a great onboarding UX and minimize user data entry. While this is a disruption to developers who will now have to adapt their onboarding, more importantly, it's a major setback for millions of LinkedIn users. LinkedIn is heightening their walls and there will no longer be an easy way for LinkedIn users to export their profile data out of LinkedIn and use it for other purposes. We build an online resume/portfolio creation tool and are offering all our premium plans for free when users signup with LinkedIn until our API access to LinkedIn profiles gets turned off on May 12: https://www.visualcv.com/?ref=freeLinkedIn Before the LinkedIn API grace period ends, we would love to hear from any more startups that are currently relying on the LinkedIn API for signups and are offering a promo to their services one last time. Please list your startup in the comments below.

lambtron 11y ago
I wrote a nightmare (high level wrapper for phantomJS: https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare) plugin for navigating linkedin: https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare-linkedin https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare-linkedin Exposes a few methods. Main use case was just to traverse linkedin results. Contributors welcome!!!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- zachlatta 11y ago
  I used to feel this way and eventually deleted my LinkedIn account. I eventually created another when we started fundraising and it's actually turned out to be a somewhat useful tool. I completely ignore my timeline and I only connect with people I've met. LinkedIn's been helpful when I find a potential donor (or someone else I want to talk to) and I can see who's connected with them. If I have a 2nd degree connection with them, then I begin my research to actually see the best way to get in touch with them. Far too many people connect with people they don't know for LinkedIn alone to be a useful tool.
- rifung 11y ago
  I used LinkedIn still, although I don't do much on there. I find it useful for finding a job seeing as I'm new to the industry and don't have a connection at every company I might want to apply to. For startups I use AngelList but for big companies I've found it difficult to get an interview by just applying through their website; it's usually easier to find a recruiter and even easier if you were initially contacted by one.
fourstar 11y ago
Don't make your product depend on other products. It's pretty simple, really. Follow that rule and you won't need to worry.
- jlas 11y ago
  Most products depend on other products. e.g. Apple computers use components from other manufacturers. Name one product that doesn't rely on another product.
  - cag_ii 11y ago
    If a component from one manufacturer becomes unavailable (or that manuf. isn't playing "fair"), another one can usually be sourced. That said, I think that: "don't make your service depend on other services without some sort of contract or agreement to provide" is a better rule of thumb than the one above.
    - bpicolo 11y ago
      Don't rely on free APIs to stay free. : P
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      Additionally, the same model may be sourcing parts from multiple vendors (for instance, laptop displays)
  - colechristensen 11y ago
    The difference is that the core competence of Intel is providing chips to other businesses. It's not a stretch to say everything that goes into an Apple product is made by companies that specialize in selling components to other companies. If some supplier doesn't work out, there are a dozen others to pick up the slack. Basing your product on top of LinkedIn? The core of their business isn't anywhere near providing that API.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    It's not the same concept, at all. Building your company around the core business of LinkedIn/Facebook/etc is dumb, because you are nothing more than a complement to their core mission. Best case, you become a commodity and achieve modest success, but the oxygen gets cut off at any time.. If you're very successful, you become a feature of the mother product. When you're Apple buying memory from Samsung, that's different. Samsung's output is memory chips... that's the business. If nobody buys memory chips, they lose money.
T3RMINATED 11y ago
LinkedIn will die soon
dataker 11y ago
Like Twitter and other Tech 'Giants', this is insane. These corporations assume they can do it all on their own, as they have billions of dollars and great engineers. Still, it's quite useless: greed is what really drives true innovation. Good luck Linkedin
- a3n 11y ago
  I suspect these changes are prompted by lawyers and/or investors, more than engineering.
  - mildbow 11y ago
    Huh. Is there some specific reason you think so? If something like this is driven by lawyers, that's ridiculous: they advise, not prescribe.They are tools, not the brain manipulating the tool. Investors .. maybe. But, why would investors be so myopic? Or rather, do such myopic investors have enough control to push this? To me it sounds like linkedin leadership saw how much they were making from recruitment and decided to open up the sales side of the business too. And, instead of competing for sales data enrichment, they decided to make it a one-player game. Whatever. Time to buy linkedin stock, and set a reminder to sell in 1-2 years.
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  I can see Twitter, they are struggling trying to monetize themselves, and I believe they still aren't making a profit. LinkedIn on the other hand, I'm surprised, I thought they made most of their earnings by selling greater access to recruiters. I'm wondering what they are trying to capture here, that they think they'll be able to make revenue from.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    I can see Twitter too, they never make any money as far I as I can tell.
    - demachina 11y ago
cmalpeli 11y ago
Glad you are calling attention to this. We (https://jobboard.io https://jobboard.io) offer a feature for our users where they can have a profile database as part of their job boards (example: http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles) - Profile creation is super easy via LinkedIn, but we've had to strip back use of r_fullprofile. A huge pain for job seekers. We "applied" to get the permission to use it but were denied without explanation. Sad state of affairs.
- zafarnamah 11y ago
  We also have a jobs marketplace and they killed our access.
a3n 11y ago
Tangent: I'm slowly working on a toy site, and I want to provide API access (nowhere close yet). I had thought to use LinkedIn as one of a few APIs to learn from and to prompt thinking. Anyone recommend a few good API-backed sites to learn from? Is HN's API particularly good, or simple, or something? Anything else?
- faitswulff 11y ago
  Reddit. Append '.json' to any path and you'll get JSON. It's a thing of beauty. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json
  - a3n 11y ago
    http://www.reddit.com/.json http://www.reddit.com/.json Why yes, that is beautiful. :)
- vtbassmatt 11y ago
  Reddit's API is pretty easy to get started with. Find a page within Reddit that contains the data you want, add ".json" to the URL, and chances are very good that you'll get exactly what you need.
- jbhatab 11y ago
  So many apis. facebook, twitter, gdelt, soundcloud, forecast, archive.org, product hunt, pinterest, reddit, etc.
clockmonster786 11y ago
We built Prezence an app that showed you the LinkedIn profiles of the people around you https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=954962586&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftw... For us LinkedIn integration was obviously critical. We think we can still go forward with what API's are available but we knew full well we were building a business on top of another business's API. So it is what it is. Can't really say it's unfair, they built the platform. Oh well.
- nailer 11y ago
  Have you tried contacting them and requesting access?
Michielvv 11y ago
What I'm wondering about is, what will happen if you request certain permissions (e.g. w_messages / rw_groups ) as part of the oauth process, but do not actually call API endpoints that require them. The documentation just mentions the limitation in API endpoints, but I'm a bit worried whether it could make the oauth login fail due to permissions requested that you can no longer use.
- Michielvv 11y ago
  Guess it is answered... yes... this breaks your auth flow... It is now mentioned on: https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-tra... as well, don't remember reading that before.
purans 11y ago
That's why I hate working with these so-called APIs, they release it then cut it down or stop it. Never rely on these APIs to build anything significant
Jarred 11y ago
Clearbit's person lookup API might be a suitable alternative for a number of cases: https://clearbit.com/docs https://clearbit.com/docs
bshimmin 11y ago
I think I'm correct in saying that for anyone who is just using `r_basicprofile`, you won't be affected, and you do get quite a lot of information just from that: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic-profile https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic-profile
eudoxus 11y ago
ConferenceCloud: A virtual attendance platform for professional and industry conferences. We use LinkedIn as a part of our login stuff, more specifically the fullprofile to help us understand our attendees and add to our "Contextual Networking" features which enables us to recommend other people at an event that you should connect with. Really saddened to see LinkedIn restricting this API access. It won't cause any significant disruption to our platform, but destroys the convenience of using LinkedIn.
animex 11y ago
Sounds like Twitter all over again. How soon till they are floundering and begging developers to come back?
dickhardt 11y ago
My app (Bubbler) used LinkedIn pretty heavily as a data source. There seem to be enough market demand that someone might be able to step in and be the new source of professional profiles. Does the OP have an API for taking data out for Virtual CV users?
- zthomas 11y ago
  Right now we just have simple exports in various formats like Google Doc or a PDF resume. We are looking to embed structured data with the PDF that we are creating for users so that the data is always tied to their application and it makes for really simple resume parsing.
dickhardt 11y ago
My main gripe with LinkedIn is that the API is not even available for a fee through their partner programs. Yahoo! mail recently launched integration with LinkedIn data, and Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics have integration, but no other CRM is allowed to have access.
basco1185 11y ago
It looks like LinkedIn is having the illusion that the profile data is "owned" by them. Well... it isn't. If I cannot share my profile information with the platforms I choose, LinkedIn will loose it's sympathy factor for jobseekers. LinkedIn's decision triggered us at https://www.wematchit.nl https://www.wematchit.nl to work on a better solution. A world where LinkedIn will no longer be needed :-)

78 points by zthomas 11y ago

lambtron 11y ago

I wrote a nightmare (high level wrapper for phantomJS: https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare) plugin for navigating linkedin: https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare-linkedin https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare-linkedin Exposes a few methods. Main use case was just to traverse linkedin results. Contributors welcome!!!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

zachlatta 11y ago
I used to feel this way and eventually deleted my LinkedIn account. I eventually created another when we started fundraising and it's actually turned out to be a somewhat useful tool. I completely ignore my timeline and I only connect with people I've met. LinkedIn's been helpful when I find a potential donor (or someone else I want to talk to) and I can see who's connected with them. If I have a 2nd degree connection with them, then I begin my research to actually see the best way to get in touch with them. Far too many people connect with people they don't know for LinkedIn alone to be a useful tool.
rifung 11y ago
I used LinkedIn still, although I don't do much on there. I find it useful for finding a job seeing as I'm new to the industry and don't have a connection at every company I might want to apply to. For startups I use AngelList but for big companies I've found it difficult to get an interview by just applying through their website; it's usually easier to find a recruiter and even easier if you were initially contacted by one.

fourstar 11y ago

Don't make your product depend on other products. It's pretty simple, really. Follow that rule and you won't need to worry.

jlas 11y ago
Most products depend on other products. e.g. Apple computers use components from other manufacturers. Name one product that doesn't rely on another product.
- cag_ii 11y ago
  If a component from one manufacturer becomes unavailable (or that manuf. isn't playing "fair"), another one can usually be sourced. That said, I think that: "don't make your service depend on other services without some sort of contract or agreement to provide" is a better rule of thumb than the one above.
  - bpicolo 11y ago
    Don't rely on free APIs to stay free. : P
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    Additionally, the same model may be sourcing parts from multiple vendors (for instance, laptop displays)
- colechristensen 11y ago
  The difference is that the core competence of Intel is providing chips to other businesses. It's not a stretch to say everything that goes into an Apple product is made by companies that specialize in selling components to other companies. If some supplier doesn't work out, there are a dozen others to pick up the slack. Basing your product on top of LinkedIn? The core of their business isn't anywhere near providing that API.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  It's not the same concept, at all. Building your company around the core business of LinkedIn/Facebook/etc is dumb, because you are nothing more than a complement to their core mission. Best case, you become a commodity and achieve modest success, but the oxygen gets cut off at any time.. If you're very successful, you become a feature of the mother product. When you're Apple buying memory from Samsung, that's different. Samsung's output is memory chips... that's the business. If nobody buys memory chips, they lose money.

T3RMINATED 11y ago

LinkedIn will die soon

dataker 11y ago

Like Twitter and other Tech 'Giants', this is insane. These corporations assume they can do it all on their own, as they have billions of dollars and great engineers. Still, it's quite useless: greed is what really drives true innovation. Good luck Linkedin

a3n 11y ago
I suspect these changes are prompted by lawyers and/or investors, more than engineering.
- mildbow 11y ago
  Huh. Is there some specific reason you think so? If something like this is driven by lawyers, that's ridiculous: they advise, not prescribe.They are tools, not the brain manipulating the tool. Investors .. maybe. But, why would investors be so myopic? Or rather, do such myopic investors have enough control to push this? To me it sounds like linkedin leadership saw how much they were making from recruitment and decided to open up the sales side of the business too. And, instead of competing for sales data enrichment, they decided to make it a one-player game. Whatever. Time to buy linkedin stock, and set a reminder to sell in 1-2 years.
dorfsmay 11y ago
I can see Twitter, they are struggling trying to monetize themselves, and I believe they still aren't making a profit. LinkedIn on the other hand, I'm surprised, I thought they made most of their earnings by selling greater access to recruiters. I'm wondering what they are trying to capture here, that they think they'll be able to make revenue from.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I can see Twitter too, they never make any money as far I as I can tell.
  - demachina 11y ago

cmalpeli 11y ago

Glad you are calling attention to this. We (https://jobboard.io https://jobboard.io) offer a feature for our users where they can have a profile database as part of their job boards (example: http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles) - Profile creation is super easy via LinkedIn, but we've had to strip back use of r_fullprofile. A huge pain for job seekers. We "applied" to get the permission to use it but were denied without explanation. Sad state of affairs.

zafarnamah 11y ago
We also have a jobs marketplace and they killed our access.

a3n 11y ago

Tangent: I'm slowly working on a toy site, and I want to provide API access (nowhere close yet). I had thought to use LinkedIn as one of a few APIs to learn from and to prompt thinking. Anyone recommend a few good API-backed sites to learn from? Is HN's API particularly good, or simple, or something? Anything else?

faitswulff 11y ago
Reddit. Append '.json' to any path and you'll get JSON. It's a thing of beauty. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json
- a3n 11y ago
  http://www.reddit.com/.json http://www.reddit.com/.json Why yes, that is beautiful. :)
vtbassmatt 11y ago
Reddit's API is pretty easy to get started with. Find a page within Reddit that contains the data you want, add ".json" to the URL, and chances are very good that you'll get exactly what you need.
jbhatab 11y ago
So many apis. facebook, twitter, gdelt, soundcloud, forecast, archive.org, product hunt, pinterest, reddit, etc.

clockmonster786 11y ago

We built Prezence an app that showed you the LinkedIn profiles of the people around you https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=954962586&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftw... For us LinkedIn integration was obviously critical. We think we can still go forward with what API's are available but we knew full well we were building a business on top of another business's API. So it is what it is. Can't really say it's unfair, they built the platform. Oh well.

nailer 11y ago
Have you tried contacting them and requesting access?

Michielvv 11y ago

What I'm wondering about is, what will happen if you request certain permissions (e.g. w_messages / rw_groups ) as part of the oauth process, but do not actually call API endpoints that require them. The documentation just mentions the limitation in API endpoints, but I'm a bit worried whether it could make the oauth login fail due to permissions requested that you can no longer use.

Michielvv 11y ago
Guess it is answered... yes... this breaks your auth flow... It is now mentioned on: https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-tra... as well, don't remember reading that before.

purans 11y ago

That's why I hate working with these so-called APIs, they release it then cut it down or stop it. Never rely on these APIs to build anything significant

Jarred 11y ago

Clearbit's person lookup API might be a suitable alternative for a number of cases: https://clearbit.com/docs https://clearbit.com/docs

bshimmin 11y ago

I think I'm correct in saying that for anyone who is just using `r_basicprofile`, you won't be affected, and you do get quite a lot of information just from that: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic-profile https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic-profile

eudoxus 11y ago

ConferenceCloud: A virtual attendance platform for professional and industry conferences. We use LinkedIn as a part of our login stuff, more specifically the fullprofile to help us understand our attendees and add to our "Contextual Networking" features which enables us to recommend other people at an event that you should connect with. Really saddened to see LinkedIn restricting this API access. It won't cause any significant disruption to our platform, but destroys the convenience of using LinkedIn.

animex 11y ago

Sounds like Twitter all over again. How soon till they are floundering and begging developers to come back?

dickhardt 11y ago

My app (Bubbler) used LinkedIn pretty heavily as a data source. There seem to be enough market demand that someone might be able to step in and be the new source of professional profiles. Does the OP have an API for taking data out for Virtual CV users?

zthomas 11y ago
Right now we just have simple exports in various formats like Google Doc or a PDF resume. We are looking to embed structured data with the PDF that we are creating for users so that the data is always tied to their application and it makes for really simple resume parsing.

dickhardt 11y ago

My main gripe with LinkedIn is that the API is not even available for a fee through their partner programs. Yahoo! mail recently launched integration with LinkedIn data, and Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics have integration, but no other CRM is allowed to have access.

basco1185 11y ago

It looks like LinkedIn is having the illusion that the profile data is "owned" by them. Well... it isn't. If I cannot share my profile information with the platforms I choose, LinkedIn will loose it's sympathy factor for jobseekers. LinkedIn's decision triggered us at https://www.wematchit.nl https://www.wematchit.nl to work on a better solution. A world where LinkedIn will no longer be needed :-)