Changes to our Developer Program

Today we are announcing some significant changes to our Developer Program. Over the past several years, we’ve seen some exciting applications from our developer community. While many delivered value back to our members and LinkedIn, not all have.

As such, we’ve taken steps to refocus the Developer Program from primarily open APIs to partnership integrations that we believe provide the most value to our members, developers and business. And we’re seeing great success from this approach with partners such as  Samsung, WeChat, Evernote and our Sponsored Updates partner program.

Starting on May 12, 2015, we will be limiting the open APIs to only support the following uses:

• Allowing members to represent their professional identity via their LinkedIn profile using our Profile API.
• Enabling members to post certifications directly to their LinkedIn profile with our Add to Profile tools.
• Enabling members to share professional content to their LinkedIn network from across the Web leveraging our Share API.
• Enabling companies to share professional content to LinkedIn with our Company API.
  

All other APIs will require developers to become a member of one of our partnership programs. For more information about these programs and to apply, go here.  A more technical breakdown of exactly what’s changing at the API level can be found in our transition guide and our updated API Terms of Use. We encourage all developers to review both documents to ensure their applications are supported and to ensure a smooth transition.

The developer community continues to be a priority for LinkedIn. We want to continue providing tools needed to create great products around the use cases we support. So today, we’re releasing a new Mobile SDK for Android that allows developers to build applications that make it easy for members to login with their LinkedIn credentials and deep link to view member profiles within the LinkedIn app.  We will continue to introduce new opportunities, such as the LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge, where we will be working closely with developers to help further our company's vision.

For many developers, we understand that today’s changes may be disappointing and disruptive, but we believe these changes will provide further clarity and focus on which types of integrations will be supported by LinkedIn.