B2B Marketing News

More evidence of the potential of mobile as a genuine B2B marketing medium emerged this month, with the announcement that professional network LinkedIn has launched a mobile service. The Beta version of the site went live on February 25 to LinkedIn's 19 million members, one million of which are in the UK. The new mobile service makes the professional network's full range of services available to users operating away from a standard Internet interface, and is accessible on a wide variety of mobile devices, including Blackberry's and the iPhone. Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn, comments, "Let's face it, every professional today is carrying a wireless device. Many are on the move, attending conferences, sales meetings and client events. Making LinkedIn available on mobile devices responds to both these business realities and will be great for our users."Research from eMarketer in the US claims that there were more than 405 million mobile Internet users by the end of last year, and this figure is expected to rise to 489 million by the end of 2008. LinkedIn is understood to be ahead of rival professional or social networking sites in terms of use of mobile, with Facebook, Ecademy and Viadeo all expressing limited interest in this contact mechanism to date.

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