AppleInsider Staff
Networking site LinkedIn on Wednesday unveiled a new iPhone-only service called Intro, which allows iOS users to receive email messages that include an embedded profile of the sender's LinkedIn information.
According to LinkedIn, Intro's embedded profile bar grants users easy access to a sender's information, including picture, company and position, which reportedly facilitates "more effective" responses. The bar is interactive, with a drop-down menu offering a deeper look at the users' LinkedIn profiles, as well as a button to quickly request a connection.
Because Apple does not allow third-party companies control of its Mail app, including plug-ins, developers have taken to creating standalone mail apps. Intro, however, is not an add-on, but instead an integrated service that attaches to a user's email account, thus allowing LinkedIn to insert the profile bar at the top of messages from other registered users.
When signing up for the service, users must grant LinkedIn access to their email account. As noted by TechHive, LinkedIn is leveraging technology created by startup Rapportive, which the company purchased last year.
In LinkedIn's implementation, messages are scanned, and if an email account match is found in the service's database, the corresponding information is inserted into the incoming email. To work, a user's email address must be registered with their LinkedIn account, and cannot be from a an organization (such as .org addresses). Messages must also be less than 128Kb to process.
Intro also requires users install a new profile in iOS that will allow functionality with the Mail app, allowing for user to create a new account not associated with Apple's defaults. The profile can be deleted if a user decides to stop using the service.
Currently, Intro supports iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and Google Apps.
LinkedIn's latest offering may be useful to some, but the implementation does raise security concerns. Most notably, a user's email correspondence must filter through two separate servers. Intro fetches messages from a main account, like iCloud, scans and attaches the appropriate LinkedIn data, then sends it to a user's iPhone.
The company notes in its Pledge of Privacy, however, that no information will be shared with outside parties and all private information will be kept confidential.
To take advantage of the free service, LinkedIn users can visit the dedicated Intro website to initiate the registration process.
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10 Comments
I really, really want to use LinkedIn but I can't fool myself from seeing it as anything other than a gimmicky niche social media platform. I check mine like maybe once a month, everything is still done with Facebook. I still don't know what the purpose of Twitter is either lol.
Ha, I agree and have been looking for a reason to dump this very seldom used App. i see no value what so ever .
LinkedIn has attracted some significant business for my signify business. Facebook does not cons think for B2B at this point in my opinion. Twitter does show promise, but more as a distribution tool for my blog. I signed up for this and it works great using my iPhone for email. Will not work for Mail as mentioned in the above post. Thanks for the useful information!
LinkedIn is trying to boost their user-engagement. Most treat them like a online resume%u2014fill it once and never touches it again. May be visit the site for 30 seconds when someone accepts your invitation to connect. I'm seeing a lot of recruiters using it though. Within the past month, I got 3 requests to connect to discuss job postings, mostly from the HR agencies. I guess they are the only one who search for candidates now. In-house HR people are just too lazy to do that.
The problem with LinkedIn is it is no different than a dating system. I recall my sister spotting her ex on a dating site where he had miraculously earned a university degree, grown two inches and lost several years in age in the weeks they had been apart. I come across similar BS on LinkedIn. People I actually know with failed businesses, DUIs and so on, now working from a bedroom, yet their profile on LinkedIn read like they were Fortune 500 CEOs. Social Media bla bla bla ... Much of it will go the way of AOL before we know it as the next gimmicky thing comes along.