Don't be so sure about Crunchbase API. It's owned by AOL, which haven't played nicely in the past, too. https://qht.co/item?id=6680040

Sure, the "halflife of openness" of crunchbase is probably smaller than angellist.

However, at this point crunchbase is pretty open (to the point of giving data dumps) so I'll give them the benefit of doubt for the next 2 years.

Anyway, startups seem to tend towards closing off access to their data as they become the dominant player so it's a question of when not whether.

Yup, we saw this coming years ago, and have taken a number of steps to move away from them and leverage other networks more (Github, Twitter, Crunchbase, AngelList, etc.). If you're interested in chatting about this, shoot me a note.

Hey vivek, same thing I said to srjk goes for you as well. I write for Gigaom and I'm hoping to talk to some developers about the news. If you're up for it, would like to hear about why you started migrating awhile ago. I'm at carmel.deamicis@gigaom.com

Hey srjk, I write for Gigaom and I'm hoping to talk to some developers about the news. Up for chatting about why you saw this coming awhile ago? if so, drop me a line at carmel.deamicis@gigaom.com

They have been moving into "sales intelligence". Their data/professional graph is a pretty big (maybe only) competitive advantage for the next year or two in that area. So, it follows that they would block off access for possible competitors and/or cordon off more data. This move became inevitable when they partitioned their API by "partner access" a while back.

However, this is great news :) It will just make linkedin irrelevant quicker. They are moving away from being a social network for professionals to being a source of sales intelligence. Most users wont be too happy with that. And, unlike facebook, linkedin is much easier to migrate off of. Really, linkedin was the first big professional network, not the last one.

IMHO angellist is more in line with what the future of professional networks is.