LinkedInABox Widget – What the LinkedIn Widget Should Look Like

A while back I left a review of the somewhat Spartan LinkedIn badge in which I concluded:

LinkedIn has stuck to its guns of being a no nonsense professional service that offers the functionality you need to manage and extend your professional network, and not much else.  There are no user photos on the site, no html embeds allowed, and not much of the other functionality that most social networking services offer.

The LinkedIn widget is an extension of this highly focused approach.  As a self-proclaimed widget aficionado, this widget leaves me a little cold – there’s just not much to write about.

I’m happy to say that there now is a more interesting LinkedIn widget to write about.  A service called LinkedInABox has developed a JavaScript widget that does a nice job of capturing the key elements of your LinkedIn profile for display on your blog.

The LinkedInABox widget configuration tool lets you select a display name, the fields from your LinkedIn profile you would like to display (Summary, Education, Connections, Etc.), a color, and a background image.  You can see my LinkedInABox widget in the right hand column.

I think these guys did a nice job.  The widget is extremely easy to set up, and packs a lot of information in a small footprint.

There are two big stumbling blocks for LinkedInABox to overcome in order to gain broad adoption.  The first is convincing folks to share their LinkedIn login information with an unknown site.  If I were these guys, I would be plastering the home page with whatever third party trust seals that they can find, as well as linking to a comprehensive privacy policy that details exactly how my login information will be used, stored, and protected.  If I hadn’t been a reckless widget blogger, I probably would have been hesitant to share my LinkedIn login info.

The second, and far more serious stumbling block, is the lack of control they have over their own destiny.  This service is completely and utterly dependent on LinkedIn continuing to allow them access to the profile data.  Should LinkedIn decide that they would prefer that consumers of LinkedIn profile data click through to their site (where the traffic can be monetized), it will be lights out for LinkedInABox.

The business model here appears to try and get bought by LinkedIn. 

As a loyal LinkedIn user, I want the ability to display MY profile data wherever I want it.  The current LinkedIn badge doesn’t cut it, and the lack of a real distributed presence is a weakness that deserves to be exploited by entrepreneurs like those from LinkedInABox.

I hope that this widget gets some traction.  At a minimum, it should put the pressure on LinkedIn to set their our data free.

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I wonder whether this is really the case - with the username and password, who could LinkedIn prevent LinkeInABox from retrieving the date? At least, it's the user's information, so he should be able to decide...

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