BusinessWeek.com this week announced that it has formed two partnerships with LinkedIn, the online professional network. BusinessWeek.com and Capital IQ, a unit of Standard & Poors, will provide company data for LinkedIn's new Company Profile feature, which launched last week. [BusinessWeek and Standard & Poors are McGraw-Hill companies].
Users who take advantage of the Company Profile feature will gain access to business overviews that contain industry statistics provided by BusinessWeek and Capital IQ in additional to information about a specific company from LinkedIn. In addition, the company profile feature also contains a link to BusinessWeek.com's Company Insight Center, where users can find additional company information free of charge.
BusinessWeek.com added the Company Insider feature, where users can view personal contacts on LinkedIn at companies that are featured in BusinessWeek.com stories. Company Insider, which launched earlier this month, is the first of several LinkedIn Intelligent Applications that will be added to the site.
In a press release announcing the partnerships, Roger Neal, BusinessWeek Digital's senior vice president and general manager, noted how the features will expand the publisher's content to BusinessWeek.com's 8 million users and LinkedIn's network of 20 million registered professionals. This is certainly a great way for BusinessWeek to expand its customer base and get its content in the hands of a group that really needs it.
LinkedIn has become such a prominent player in the business networking arena that it makes perfect sense for a prominent business content player like BusinessWeek to form a partnership. This alliance will certain open many eyes to the value of BusinessWeek content and will undoubtedly lead to an increase in traffic to the BusinessWeek.com site as well as a boost in subscriptions. It's also a smart move for LinkedIn, which certainly has a credible name in the marketplace already; but being aligned with a long-established brand like BusinessWeek definitely doesn't hurt.
With Company Insider the first of many LinkedIn applications BusinessWeek.com has planned for its site, it will be interesting to see what other features are next. They certainly have to potential to make BusinessWeek.com an even more robust source for business information.