LinkedInABox: a LinkedIn widget

LinkedInABox is a flash widget designed to be embedded on blogs and social networking profiles, that displays information pulled from a users LinkedIn account.

To begin creating your own version of the widget you first enter your LinkedIn log-in details into the LinkedInABox site (though they aren't stored), and from there you get to choose from a list of color schemes and add an optional background image. Next you can select which parts of your LinkedIn profile to include, for example, you may not want to make your connections public. Finally, you're given embed codes for both javascript compatible sites such as a personal blog, or those that only accept flash widgets e.g. MySpace.

Perhaps the neatest feature of the widget is the ability for visitors who are also members of LinkedIn to check if they are already connected to the site owner or alternatively, send them a message with their profile details linked. In this way, LinkedInABox helps to make LinkedIn more distributed, rather than being a purely centralized social network.

Amir Glick (who, along with Yaniv Solnik, developed the widget) told me they are exploring additional features, including provide aggregated statistics and trends such as (in the LinkedIn case): 15% of your readers are working in Furtune500, 80% used to work in a web company, 30% has a higher education, etc. Further down the road they plan to develop a version of the widget that will pull data from other social networks:

"... to enable more means to get people together on the basis of their shared interests, location, friends, etc. (again, all extracted from existing community databases and processed to fit the context of the specific Blog)"

 
If you are a company about to launch an exciting new social web service or product and would like me to take a look, get in touch.