LinkedIn Will Allow Economics Researchers to Mine Its Data

LinkedIn Corp., the professional social networking site owned by Microsoft Corp., says it will open its vast trove of data to academic researchers. the company, whose chief data officer, Igor Perisic said it’s putting controls in place to protect user privacy. The data will be restricted to only those whose academic proposals have been approved. The researchers will only have access to aggregate, anonymized data and will only be able to use it within a secure “sandbox.”