LinkedIn shutting down iOS Intro integration, and other news for Feb. 10, 2014
LinkedIn has announced that it will shut down its Intro service next month. LinkedIn Intro was introduced last fall and was unique in that it used clever coding to connect LinkedIn contacts data with iOS' Mail app on the iPhone. Intro was actually a clever integration of the service for LinkedIn power users. Each time a user received an email in iOS' Mail app, a LinkedIn banner would appear above the message to show the user how they were connected to the sender via LinkedIn.
However, in order to achieve this, LinkedIn used some clever coding (though still not breaking any of Apple's existing rules) and did not work with Apple in any way on the service. In a blog post announcing the forthcoming shutdown of the service on March 7, LinkedIn said:
We are shutting down LinkedIn Intro as of March 7, 2014. Intro was launched last year to bring the power of LinkedIn to your email inbox on your iPhone. While Intro is going away, we will continue to work on bringing the power of LinkedIn to wherever our members work. Email, where the average professional spends more than a quarter of their time, is one of those places, so we'll continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships. Users of Intro will be able to uninstall it between now and March 7 and switch back to their previous mail accounts. Members can continue to use Rapportive, which brings the power of LinkedIn to Gmail.
There are no signs Apple has asked LinkedIn to shut down Intro and the two companies appear to have a good relationship, as LinkedIn support is baked into OS X 10.9. Given that Intro was a useful solution that added context to messages, here's hoping Apple and LinkedIn might be working together to add more integration between the professional network and iOS in iOS 8.
In other news:
If you are interested in the legal complexities of dealing with the justice systems in America and Italy while trying to obtain an iPhone's passcode lock to solve a murder case, read this interesting article about how international criminal law can be so confusing to navigate.
Speaking of laws... a judge has denied Samsung's request for a new trial in the never-ending Apple vs. Samsung battle that feels like it has entered its fifth decade now.
