LinkedIn is still lacking a public API in spite of several announcements in 2007 and 2008 (they even confirmed OpenSocial support but so far did not deliver anything).
However, I think there are some opportunities to emulate a light-weight LinkedIn API using Drupal. Imagine asking your users to provide their LinkedIn username in their drupal profiles. You could then parse their public profile pages (eg using FeedAPI) and store their current work positions, experiences etc. in a custom content type (CCK) that you link to the user profile. The only coding needed to accomplish this is a custom parser for linkedin profile pages, but I guess using XPath or hResume this wouldn't be too difficult.
Is anyone interested in something like this? We are thinking to implement this functionality and would like some feedback on this.
Comments
risky business
Bear in mind that Linkedin have been known to shut down and ban users for 'scraping'. While you might think that your intentions are legitimate and non-threatening to Linkedin's business, they might not think the same. You could end up messing up your users' Linkedin accounts. Check the Linkedin User Agreement. Section 11 under the subsection named DON'Ts:
(don't) use manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, “scrape,” “crawl” or “spider” any web pages contained in the site.
Thanks for the warnings
Thanks for the warnings Adrian, indeed LinkedIn's User Agreement is quite clear on this. I guess we have to wait until LinkedIn publicly releases its API.
LinkedIn Parsing
Myself and many other people I know would have a great interest in some type of LinkedIn profile parsing functionality...more specifically a function that would allow me to store
(after transferring) the pieces of the background to my own database in appropriate fields via a simple spreadsheet type of file or csv file. The legalities of this storage in my database of what already is in the public profile data seems unchallengeable. In essence, its just a time saver than to copy the whole file and piece it in manually.
What's puzzling is - I asked LinkedIn directly if they sold software or had an arrangement with one of their partners on a product to do this. They answered no (somewhat ubruptly with no interest in any kind of elaboration). A company called eGrabber came up with a product like this but then seemed to pull it from the market quickly and they phrased it was for "improvements". So...if you know of some software that allows me to do this I would love to hear more about it !
jpeterson at venture-profiles dot com