Goodbyes are always hard, and today LinkedIn is saying farewell to its Intro service. The product released last fall by the social network that used questionable methods to connect its contact data with the native Mail app for iPhone is shutting down next month, the company announced today.
First impressions are always important, of course, and LinkedIn was met with a rough introduction to its service. The product wasn’t exactly an App Store app and used unfamiliar methods to tie in LinkedIn contact data to iOS Mail. LinkedIn says users will need to manually remove the functionality from their devices before March 7th for email to resume working correctly. Check below for the full announcement as well as instructions for removing LinkedIn Intro…
We strive to deliver product experiences that delight our members and add value to their professional lives. This sometimes means shutting down certain products or features to focus on the most relevant offerings for our members.
On March 7th, we are retiring LinkedIn Intro for iPhone. To avoid disruption to your email service, please uninstall Intro by following the instructions below. If you do not uninstall by this date, you’ll be unable to send or receive email from your Intro enabled email accounts until you do so.
From your iPhone home screen, tap the iPhone Settings app.
Tap the General section. If you weren’t taken to the main page of your iPhone settings, tap the navigation arrow in the top left until you get back to the main settings page.
Scroll down and tap the Profiles section.
Tap all profiles that start with Intro to remove. It’s important to remove all of them.
To verify that your previous mail accounts are turned on, return to iPhone Settings, tap “Mail, Contacts, and Calendar” then tap on your mail account. Make sure the Mail switch is toggled to green for “On”.
We thank you for using Intro. If you’d like more information on these changes, please visit our Help Center or our blog.If you’re a Rapportive user, note that we will continue to support Rapportive which brings the power of LinkedIn to your Gmail account on desktop.
Thank you for being a valued member,
The LinkedIn Team
It was always interesting to see Apple allow such a service to exist on iOS, but LinkedIn says the decision to shut down the service was its own. LinkedIn enjoys limited integration with OS X, and I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see that expand to iOS in the future.
While the shut down could purely be based on lack of interest, I can’t help but wonder if this move could hint at actual iOS integration like Twitter and Facebook enjoy in the near future.
LinkedIn is also pointing users to its latest iOS app as it plans to begin ending support for older versions.
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“LinkedIn says users will need to manually remove the functionality from their devices before March 7th for email to resume working correctly.”
Wow. What a P.O.S.
It’s the technical stuff that prevents LinkedIn from manually removing the functionality for you.
Not sure what you mean by “It was always interesting to see Apple allow such a service to exist on iOS.” Apple did nothing to explicitly allow Intro to exist; it’s just a clever solution that works within the constraints of the platform. At the same time, I thought LinkedIn did quite a good job at making Intro easy-to-use despite its quirkiness.
I am certain we will see this feature integrated into future iOS version.