Follow The Leader - Linkedin Does an App Platform, Why?

This past week saw something we've seem before, again and again, with Linkedin launching it's application platform.  The big question is why, what's the point?  Their team is pushing it as professional applications for things like sharing book reviews, documents, and extended communication options.

Okay, that's cool, but most of the people you generally connect with on Linkedin are professional peers, if you had a need for this you're probably already doing it with something like IM or google docs.  Since Linkedin is a professional network it doesn't really lend itself to the type of viral sheep throwing applications that made the Facebook platform so popular.

Now, the thing I'm really wondering is why it took them almost a year from announcing the platform (about 5 months after the Facebook platform took off) and actually releasing it.  To me it seems like the first post on their platform was a load of crap and they were just trying to grab onto a bit of the hype that Facebook had generated.  On top of this almost every application I tried to use gave me some sort of error or had information flowing outside of the visible area for the application.  I expect more from such a high profile company with over a year of development time.

This doesn't make Linkedin suck less, if anything it makes them suck more because it seems like all their doing is running after the successful ideas from other companies.  If it doesn't make it suck less, don't do it.