LinkedIn has today launched its OpenSocial applications platform and one of the first providers will be UK collaboration and project management startup Huddle.net. In fact, it is the only European company on the applications provider list.
Huddle Workspaces will be a bespoke application inside LinkedIn’s service with all the key functionality of its main service. In a nutshell you can create a Huddle workgroup from within Linkedin, and vice versa, if you create a project inside Huddle’s system you can link it to you LinkedIn account later on.
When you install the application on your LinkedIn account (you can do it here) Huddle creates a workspace for you so you can start uploading or creating files, have discussions and invite your LinkedIn connections to collaborate on a project. If you’re an existing Huddle user then you can link your account to LinkedIn and see all of your existing workspaces within the Linkedin app. This is essentially a cut-down version of the main Huddle application, designed to fit within Linkedin’s platform.
The move should be good for adoption of the platform – LinkedIn’s 30 million users are largely business people who will now be exposed to Huddle’s services. As TechCrunch reports, launch available applications include a trip application from TripIt, presentations from SlideShare and Google Presentations, blog feeds from WordPress and Six Apart, file storage and collaboration from Box.net, online workspaces from Huddle, and a Reading List app from Amazon that will allow users to share the books they are reading. LinkedIn is also offering a few homebrewed apps, including a tracking application that monitors for a company’s mentions on Twitter and a Poll app.
Significantly, Huddle is understood to have begun negotiations to go onto LinkedIN’s platform when they were on the Web Mission trip earlier this year, thus proving the validity and importance of such trips. That should shut up some of those negative critics who thought nothing would come of the project.