(* Source: Pete Cashmore *) 

LinkedIn is feeling the heat from Facebook’s platform strategy: realizing it could lose its dominant position in business networking if it doesn’t act, founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman said on Friday that LinkedIn will provide open APIs “within 9 months”. Most likely, it’ll be much sooner (and it’ll need to be - 9 months is a long, long time on the web).

It’s a wise move, of course: as competition increases, the only way for market leaders to sure up their positions is to build a Microsoft-esque ecosystem. The question is how MySpace will react to Facebook’s latest moves: although still ahead in terms of size and growth, there’s a sense that the market leader has lost its sheen. And I hope that LinkedIn carries this idea forward with more innovation, rather than simply following Facebook’s every step.

The question: what would you build for LinkedIn?