In a recent development, LinkedIn announced that they have acquired contact management start-up, Connected, to possibly create a LinkedIn CRM service.

Even though users of LinkedIn can manage their contacts directly through the website, it does not yet have a CRM tool.

Connected, which is a customer relationship management tool, helps people or businesses that are either too small or those that do not want to use the software offered by Salesforce.com.

This tool offers users a way to manage all their contacts online from multiple sources like Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Contacts. Users can manage their contacts the way they want. For example, they can be tagged and sorted so the user can enter a note about the contact after a call or meeting or anything else.

The user can also bookmark the LinkedIn profile of a contact he does not intend to be friends on LindedIn.

Another interesting and useful feature of Connected is that by simply pulling in data from Google Voice and Gmail, it can show the last emails and phone calls with each contact. This way Connected is more or less like the Xobni.