When reviewing apps, two things are extremely rare; an app that sits on top of the LinkedIn API, and an app based on a premise of a book. With LunchMeet, we get both.

The iOS app was inspired by the book “Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz. The idea is that in professional networking and relationships in general, you should never have lunch alone.

With LunchMeet, you can set up impromptu lunch meetings with any of your LinkedIn connections. It’s actually a really smart idea.

The name of the app alone might make you hungry for a sandwich.

Manage your availability

When you log into the app using your LinkedIn account, you can set up multiple time slots for your availability. You can make them one-time meeting opportunities or ongoing, depending on your schedule.

Once you’ve set up your availability, LunchMeet will check your current location and suggest local restaurants and cafe’s on a map. You can choose one or just select the general area for a meeting.

The idea is that you’ll be able to find a match with the same availability or come up when someone else is browsing for a lunch meeting. This will obviously take time to catch on, but if you’re a fan of the book then you’ll get the idea of this app quickly. LunchMeet also includes the ability to share your availability on LinkedIn, so that type of virality should get people to download the app.

Interacting with your lunch date

Unfortunately, none of my LinkedIn contacts use LunchMeet yet, but you the app gives you the ability to discuss your meeting from within the app. This is a great way to keep focus on LunchMeet, and not get in the way of other emails or text messages.

If you’re unable to find a match, LunchMeet does give you the opportunity to invite any of your LinkedIn contacts directly, which is a nice usage of the API.

If you’re a power networker or just hate eating alone, LunchMeet is a great way to set up some planned serendipity. I’d like to be able to send my LunchMeet availability to Twitter and Facebook, but the app does focus solely on LinkedIn after all. The company could also integrate daily deals or use foursquare’s API to liven up the experience and save people some money. Maybe I’ll set up a lunch meeting with LunchMeet to discuss that.

LinkedIn, which has become the Web’s biggest professional social network is stepping up its game. Right now, Facebook is a hub for finding people you went to college with, and LinkedIn wants a piece of the action.

The company has announced a new feature it calls “LinkedIn Classmates“, available today.

Seeing who you’ve worked with, or who you’d like to connect with during your professional career could be greatly boosted by seeing what your friends from college are up to now. Who knows, perhaps the connection to someone you’d like to reach was in your junior class.

The company says that LinkedIn Classmates is great for catching up to discuss memories, and to make new connections, and this is an absolute no-brainer for LinkedIn.

The company said about today’s launch:

Because we understand the power of alumni networks, we are delighted to unveil LinkedIn Classmates – a tool for insights and networking for alumni of colleges and universities around the world.

The LinkedIn Classmates feature tells you where your college mates are working now, what industry they’re working in, and where they’re living, all in a simple glimpse. This completely beats Facebook’s approach, and since LinkedIn’s core is to gather your full resume, it’s more than likely that you’ll have a better shot of connecting with forgotten friends on LinkedIn.

It appears as if LinkedIn is taking all of the data that the company has collected about us, and is putting it to work in beautiful graphs and charts to help us discover new professional connections, which is the power of LinkedIn.

Below, you’ll see a that shows you what you have in common with people you went to college with. For example, you may not have been friends with someone during your senior year, but you may be in the same industry now.

It is well-known that the college that you went to is an important fact in getting hired, so being able to connect with someone who you went to school with who works at the company that holds your dream job is pretty powerful.

LinkedIn has taken yet another step in owning your career networking with LinkedIn Classmates, and if you find some lost college connections thanks to LinkedIn, let us know in the comments.

The problem with networking at conferences and industry gatherings is that most people tend to gravitate toward people they already know. Hitchie wants to help you break out of your mold by creating ‘flash mob’ social networks just before conferences to help you make new contacts.

Carlo and Fabian Markaban started work on Hitchie after they saw that professionals who were attending events and meet-ups mostly ended up talking to colleagues or known business contacts. They wanted to create a way for them to meet interesting new people instead.

Think of Hitchie as a speed dating session but for making business contacts.

The organizer of a Hitch schedules a session just ahead of an event or conference. Attendees can then head over to Hitchie and log in using Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Once they’ve logged in, they just click Attend to indicate that they will be attending the session.

The page for the Hitch gives you the ability to spread the word via those same social networks. You can also see who’s attending and who’s hosting.

Once the Hitch begins you’ll have between 5 and 8 minutes to video chat with another person attending the Hitch. You can also IM other attendees. Talk to some new people, make e-notes about interesting professionals that you’d like to remember and move on to the next person.

Hitchie aims to lower the barriers that normally exist for attendees of an event to begin conversations with new people. It’s an accelerant for social interaction at your conference that should spark new relationships and conversations.

Organizers gan sign up for an invitation to a Hitchie beta account that will allow them to set up a group and start scheduling Hitches now at Hitchie’s site.

Hitchie officially launches today at the TNW 2011 Conference. There will be a Hitchie speed networking event scheduled for the conference. You can go to the events page here and click on Attend to sign up to be a  part of the very first public Hitch!

At The Next Web Conference we want you to leave with at least 10 times the value you invested in the conference. That is why we put a lot of effort into creating an inspiring and fun atmosphere where it is really easy to bump into people and get connected.

We’ve also invested time and effort into developing a tool that help you see who else is coming, search for potential new business contacts and make appointments during the conference.

We’ve built a private (mobile) business network, that works on any phone, tablet and laptop but is only accessible to attendees of TNW2011. It really takes networking to the next level. We tested a first version of this network at a previous conference and it delivered so much more value for people, that some of them told us they would happily pay 500 euros extra for an event as long as they offered this tool too.

The network allows you to:

• Browse and search through all attendees
• Set up meetings on and around the event with attendees
• Meet potential clients
• Ask for introductions

The network is based on your Linkedin profile, so you connect to that, and within a minute you’re all set. We announced the network on Friday and within 24 hours more than 4000 profile pages were viewed.

The network is only accessible for people who are actually attending the conference. We plan to make the service available to other events in the future so if you are interested in that contact Arjen Schat. If you want to attend TNW2011 reserve a ticket before we are sold out.

Reserve your tickets today so you can see can get access to this next level networking tool too.

One of the main drivers of attending any conference are the people that are attending. Meeting someone face-to-face makes a big difference and a conference helps you to meet many people in a short period of time. Well that is at least if it is a good conference (like TNW).

Take this example: You’re an investor and constantly searching for potential startups and teams to invest in. You get a 1000 business plans per year on your desk. Scanning those opportunities is not only very time consuming, but also very inefficient. Many startups seem interesting on paper, but the team behind it is the most interesting aspect to you. So you need to meet them anyway. All these meetings take a lot of time. Why not put all those meeting in 2 days at a conference?

Same goes for startups that are looking for investment, it makes sense to meet multiple investors in person at one place.

Networking and bringing people together for (future)business is one of the main things we enable during The Next Web Conference. In our case, for startups and investors we’ve scheduled a special coffee meeting on Thursday for startups and VC’s only (this doesn’t coincide with other conference content).
The meeting is called “Lets talk business” and lasts 45 minutes. The idea is to meet multiple startups/investors in 45 minutes. Short talks, long enough to gain interest for a follow up appointment later on in the day, but short enough to make sure you don’t get stuck on one person that might not be in your interest at that point.

Hey, and we happen to have the coolest startups, the most talented teams and VC investors from all over Europe at our conference. Coincidence…

The deal:
So if you want to join this session sign up here. The first 10 startups and investors get 42% discount on a conference pass (550 in stead of 999). Normal tickets sell at 35% discount at the moment.

The Next Web Conference is the place where the international Internet scene comes together for inspiration, business and fun.

See you in April in Amsterdam, see you at The Next Web.