PeopleLinx, repositioning after losing access to LinkedIn API, integrates with Salesforce CRM

Tom Paine

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Source: PeopleLinx

Philadelphia-based PeopleLinx has integrated its social business platform into the Salesforce Sales Cloud, the company announced on Friday.

About two-thirds of current PeopleLinx customers also are Salesforce CRM users, said PeopleLinx CMO Michael Idinopulos in a phone interview with Philly Tech News, so
this integration was a feature much sought after by both current customers and prospects.
It enables users to access PeopleLinx as a tab within the CRM interface using single sign-on authentication.

PeopleLinx can help Salesforce users to optimize their social presence, configure for best
practices on Salesforce, distribute and promote content, and employ social analytics and
gamification, through techniques such as leaderboards.

One PeopleLinx customer endorsing the move was Terry Connell, Senior Vice President of Sales at Comcast Business. "Social selling is a priority for our sales team and integrating it with Salesforce.com is table stakes for us," Connell was quoted as saying in the PeopleLinx release. "It helps make social selling part of their daily sales activities."

PeopleLinx' Salesforce integration comes as the young company is still implementing an alternative strategy after being notified in March by LinkedIn that it would no longer have access to the LinkedIn API ( see Lauren Hertzler's article in the Business Journal.) This step was not aimed singurlarly at PeopleLinx, since it apparently impacted almost all CRM-type partners other than Salesforce and Microsoft, according to a ZDNet piece. For example, another partner left out was the popular Zoho.

Anyone familiar with Twitter's history would not find this type of move surprising, as Twitter often redifined the boundaries of partnerships and API access to protect its own turf, and applcations such as PeopleLinx were getting closer to markets attractive to LinkedIn in the way they made use of LinkedIn data and integration capabilities.

While PeopleLinx has taken the change in its LinkedIn relationship in stride and is making necessary adjustments, and says it has even found some advantages to it, I do think it was a bit of a surprise to PeopleLinx execs (particularly those founders who were early LinkedIn employees) who felt they had a close working relationship with LinkedIn. While discussions between PeopleLinx and LinkedIn did not reach any compromise on the API issue, Idinopulos tells me that PeopleLinx believes it can get much of the value it needs from LinkedIn by accessing its data in the way that most any other business would do so.

PeopleLinx is also broadening its sources and channels through its Salesforce integration and an integration with Twitter's platform, announced a few months ago, and is also looking to establish similar interfaces with Facebook and Google+.

Founded in 2009 by two early LinkedIn employees, Patrick Baynes and Nathan Egan, PeopleLinx has received $3.2 million in funding to date from VCs including Greycroft Partners, Osage Venture Partners, and MissionOG. PeopleLinx has some 50 clients and 25 to
30 employees, Idinopulos says.