LinkedIn goes mobile

LinkedIn, the professional networking website, has launched a mobile version of its service, with support for iPhones, the BlackBerry and other PDAs.

The company believes that the vast majority of its 19 million users already carry a wireless device such as a BlackBerry. But the new service will also work with any web-enabled mobile phone, according to LinkedIn, as it uses a standard WAP interface.

LinkedIn is launching a beta version of the software which users can access via the website http://m.linkedin.com. The site includes a version specially optimised for Apple's iPhone. Features include searching users' profiles, researching mutual contacts and inviting others to join the network.

The move into the mobile space was a response to the need to be more useful to professionals who spend a large proportion of their time on the road, rather than an attempt to catch up with the mobile plans of social networking sites such as Facebook or Bebo, according to Patrick Crane, worldwide vice president for marketing at LinkedIn. "Our aim is to make our services more readily useful to all professionals, but especially outbound professionals," he said.

Crane expects LinkedIn members to use the mobile site to look up contacts or research potential business partners. But the company plans to allow members to contact each other from the mobile service, including click to call and, possibly, text messaging functionality. Future releases of the LinkedIn mobile platform could also include voice commands. "We expect more and more initial requests [to join a network] to come from mobile phones," he said.

As well as individual professional users, LinkedIn is increasingly targeting larger organisations, where the company hopes the service will be used as a tool to improve both internal and external relationships. "In an enterprise there might be tens of thousands of staff with an official company email address," said Crane. "Many of them will be in first-degree relationships with colleagues but many will not. LinkedIn can create a virtual workspace or workgroups."

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