When developers get their hands on a social media platform, amazing things tend to happen. For example, Facebook transformed web apps when it launched the Facebook platform. The result has been everything from Facebook Connect to FarmVille. Twitter's an even better example when you start thinking of the countless Twitter apps for mobile phones and the desktop.

That magic is exactly what LinkedIn is hoping will happen with today's launch of the LinkedIn Platform, which opens up outside applications to use LinkedIn's data. Oh, and TweetDeck will be launching LinkedIn integration this week. The company has been experimenting with a developer platform for a while. Most recently, LinkedIn announced integration with Microsoft Outlook 2010. However, until today only select developers could access LinkedIn APIs. Now any developer can work with the data, much like Facebook and Twitter.







You're about to see a whole new wave of LinkedIn web applications. When I spoke with LinkedIn, I learned that a little less than a dozen apps would be launching LinkedIn integrations this week, including TweetDeck, Twitter's most popular app (we'll have another post detailing the new features soon, along with screenshots).

This is an important but long overdue move for LinkedIn. We can understand why it took longer — business users would have likely reacted badly to this a year ago, but with social media permeating the workplace, it's probably the right time now.