Social networking site LinkedIn establishes plans for business intranet service

With the heavy presence of social media within our everyday lives, it is unsurprising that social media site LinkedIn are looking at ways to expand further into the business world.

The company is establishing plans to launch an intranet application as, according to Managing Director Ariel Eckstein, "What we have seen is that people are on intranets because they have to be but are on LinkedIn because they want to be. They are spending more time on LinkedIn and less time on intranets."

For this reason, LinkedIn are aiming to create a means by which staff are able to work with their colleagues via an internal network within the site. Spurred by growing business interest, Eckstein is of the opinion that many intranets are not very user-friendly, so his plan is to create this network in order for it to require little customisation.

Eckstein is motivated by the fact that "clients come to ask and say help us make our intranet better and we work with them on product development." He is also keen to state that there will be much protection and high levels of privacy within the network in order to keep the users’ best interests as the top priority.

Despite the LinkedIn message being that they are “custodians of data", this need for adequate privacy stems as a result of privacy issues last year. Users took action after a change in the privacy setup meant that third-party advertisers were legitimately allowed to retain users’ profile pictures and information within their ads.

Users were required to manually un-tick a box if they had any objections, but LinkedIn removed the box after heavy protests and negotiations.

Eckstein is keen to enforce the privacy policy within this potential new launch, having stated "We get lots of companies coming to us with interesting propositions for the use of our customer data but we ignore them because everything we do has to be matched to the users' best interests".

For information on all the latest business news, as well as fantastic options on office space to rent, head to Search Office Space or call us on 0800 740 8080.