Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Sunday March 09 2014, @07:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the weakest-link dept.

regift_of_the_gods writes:

"The makers of Nutshell CRM, a web-based service for managing sales leads and workflow (screenshots here), have notified their customers that they will no longer able to populate profiles with data from Linkedin accounts, after Linkedin informed Nutshell that it was violating the developer API's terms of use over a year and half after Nutshell first announced the feature. It's hard to argue that Nutshell's Linkedin integration feature does not violate the Linkedin Developer API Terms of Service (specifically section C: 'If your application falls into one or more of the following categories, you are required to be part of one of our Partner Programs and have a signed agreement with LinkedIn... applications used for hiring, marketing, or sales...').

However, Nutshell's CEO says Linkedin representatives also informed him they weren't accepting applications for their Partner Program from CRM vendors at this time, leaving Salesforce and Microsoft (Dynamics) as Linkedin's sole partners in that space. Also, the TOS page notes it was last revised in August 2013; it's not immediately clear whether this clause was in place when Nutshell first announced Linkedin integration in May 2012. The CEO of Zartis, which runs a web service for tracking applicants, blogged his layman's interpretation of Linkedin's Developer API TOS sometime in 2013; his post makes no mention of a prohibition for sales or marketing."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @07:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @07:19AM (#13479)

    If Linkedin wants to limit how their data gets used by other services, more power to them. All it does is lower the profile of their site and curtail the value of their data. Allowing innovative third parties to leverage the data could have led to a lucrative relationship on both sides.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Troll=1, Insightful=3, Underrated=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jt on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:30AM

    by jt (2890) on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:30AM (#13530)

    It's hard to feel too much sympathy for one profit-making private company who built their business model on an API of another profit-making private company without bothering to read the TOS. Yes, this might have created a mutually beneficial business for both companies, but API or not you still have to make deals in the business world.