• by Shankar Gupta , October 6, 2005

LinkedIn, a company providing an online business networking service, announced today a partnership with America Online that will allow LinkedIn members to contact people within their network using the portal's instant messenger software, AIM.

LinkedIn also will provide business profiles to the AIM service, while AOL will enable LinkedIn users to easily integrate their LinkedIn profiles to their AIM profiles, and add their LinkedIn connections to their AIM buddy list.

"We're giving the ability for people to have real-time communications with their contacts on LinkedIn," said LinkedIn Vice President of Marketing Konstantin Guericke. "It gives you a chance to do a quick session, find out how they're doing, ask them a quick question--and that's really a way to strengthen your existing relationships."

He added that instant messaging is gaining traction as a business tool, rather than just a social one. "People like to get that immediate response," he said. "From our user base, we see the demand [Instant messaging] is largely social, but I think there's a very sizable group in business."

Guericke said the deal came about after users requested instant messaging functionality. "It's driven by the fact that a lot of our users want to be found, and they're already investing into the creation of the LinkedIn profile," he said. "We'll probably be working on other partnerships with other databases, wherever people want to be found." He also said he had requested instant messaging functionality.