A lot of interesting arguments for and against in the comments over the past two days.
The restriction of API is the same that Twitter did when they became more keen on controlling aspects of the app community. Whether or not that has led to decline in the traffic can be debated, or whether it was just 'time'. It is of course LI's prerogative, but a short sighted view of the world, when over the last 10+ years LinkedIn has shown little ability to innovate and evolve the service - third parties could - and they should find ways to encourage (and monetize) that
The proliferation of alternatives as suggested on stopusinglinkedin indicates there are better ways of connecting with professionals. Professionals who understand your space and less spammy/generalist ways to find permanent and freelance work - if that is your objective. There is most certainly room in the world for a more niche approach to something as important in our lives as that which generates our income.
We have been building www.somewhere.com for a bit now, trying to have quality conversations about work. Sort of by accident people are now using it to find each other for projects.
That puts us in the same category as Dribbble and Behance (without the behemoths behind the scenes), yet we are different in that we want to talk about how the sausage is made and not just show the end product. Will that be a 'winning' strategy? Time will tell, we are curious about work, how we do it, when and where and most importantly why - something others have not decided to focus on, but which we believe should be at the core when trying to find people with whom to work.
Anyway - API or not, LinkedIn is not the only game in town, perhaps they have gotten too big for their own good, perhaps they will do just fine with their 300M+ users and corporates willing to spend good money for volume...either way - we can all build and support alternatives that work better.