To date, LinkedIn [1] has only offered a handful of sidebar applications that users can install. They’ve been very picky, and only a few are aligned with vertical industries. Even then, it’s obvious that industry apps must have a broader application and be applicable to the general business community. Late last night, the rollout began for Legal Updates on LinkedIn [2] and it’s a huge win for my friends at JD Supra [3].
We’ve written about JD Supra before [4] here at Slaw, so I won’t spell out their core offering for law firms. They are, however, a company that’s been built around constructing web-based channels [5] for content delivery. With 70 million business members, the embedding of JD Supra functionality into LinkedIn – not sure how else to describe it, it’s quite seamless – has to be their biggest win yet. Looking at past partnering, and the LinkedIn effect for companies like Slideshare and Tripit, the future must seem limitless in San Francisco this morning!
I’m going to offer a bullet point summary below, but I’d like to point out Bob Ambrogi’s post [6] this morning. It’s a thorough review, complete with screen shots.
Here’s my ‘reader’s digest’ summary, including some notes from the preview Jordan Furlong [7] and I had on Monday:
- JD Supra and LinkedIn accounts are tethered – you can upload and distribute from either location.
- Without any promotion last night, signups were rolling in fast. This is going to be big.
- You can display your JD Supra collection on your LinkedIn profile for free.
- It’s also free to follow the content of others, and sharing your documents within your network’s homepage update stream.
- Distributing documents towards targeted professional groups across LinkedIn costs: $75/mo. Account upgrades are possible in LinkedIn or on JD Supra [8].
- Current premium accounts at JD Supra will be grandfathered, and distribution included at current pricing.
- The LU application smartly uses the meta-data from both websites – so content is automatically matched to users by industry or profession.
- LinkedIn looks like it might target more vertical industries in future.
- It’s an exclusive arrangement. So this will be the only searchable, browsable repository of legal information on LI.
- With 70M LI users available, JD Supra is likely the largest legal content distribution network.