I am LinkedIn.

- HobokenFlyer

I have some thoughts here, but should disclose that I have a personal bias due to my friendship with a principal of the firm.

First, and at the risk of starting a flame war, LinkedIn is really the only business-oriented social networking site that matters, at least in North America. If you're in the US or Canada, it's LinkedIn that you want to join. This isn't just my opinion -- The Economist recently concluded a story on social networks by saying that LinkedIn was the one great example of a social site useful in the context of business.

Second, getting the most out of LinkedIn is definitely not about being a link whore on the service. The idea is to add people to your network whom you would feel comfortable recommending to others. This is because on LinkedIn, you use network connections to make contact with strangers, through a series of mutual connections. I don't know Jane, but my friend Joe does. I send a request to Jane to make contact with me, and it goes through Joe. Joe (hopefully) decides to forward on the request, and (hopefully) adds a note saying that he knows me, I'm a good guy, and Jane should listen to what I have to say. If Joe is the kind of LinkedIn user with 1,000 connections, most of whom he doesn't know personally at all, why should Jane listen to him? And savvy users of LinkedIn understand this, and look not at the number of connections someone has, but rather at the number and quality of testimonials they have.

Third, LinkedIn isn't like a service such as Facebook (which I use and love). It's specifically designed not to be in your face every day, pinging you with updates on what your friends are doing. If it were, the high-level business people LinkedIn wants to attract and keep as users wouldn't use it. So what you do is you write a great profile, build out your network with people you can legitimately recommend, write testimonials for them and get testimonials in return, and then use the site on an as-needed basis. I've had great success making contact with people there -- not that I couldn't just cold-call them on my own, but it's so much better when a mutual friend tells them they should listen to what I have to say.

Fourth, maybe the best thing about LinkedIn is that it induces you to keep your resume up-to-date, and gives you a public place you can point to when people ask about you or want to find out about you (presuming you want this to happen, which I think many do). I refer others (and even myself) to my LinkedIn page on a regular basis. Also, it's a way to get those who have admired your work to tell the world how great you are, and of course it's always more valuable to have someone else say that rather than you yourself.

-- Frank

I got LinkedIn today. The site has a multiplicity of pages you need to go to to describe yourself, and my profile is still only 45% complete (according to the indicator). It's not easy to figure out the best balance of being findable, yet maintaining a semblance of privacy and protection from spammers.

I did have a pleasant surprise when I did a search for "FlyerTalk." :)

I'm LinkedIn for a while now, mostly with past and present colleagues.

I beg to differ slightly. LinkedIn is global. Here are some numbers from my network...

Top 5 locations...

9% 1. San Francisco Bay Area
7% 2. Greater New York City Area
4% 3. Greater Boston Area
3% 4. India
3% 5. Netherlands

I have connections in 46 different countries with the 3 most recent being Lesotho, Suriname, & Tuvalu.

Fastest growing locations in your network:

1. San Francisco Bay Area (1802 new)
2. Greater New York City Area (1659 new)
3. India (1146 new)

So while the US still dominates, it's really only a few locations in the US and the rest of the world is quite present on LinkedIn.

While LinkedIn is global, it is important to realise that it is quite likely that contacts that are not in North America and non-English centric contacts may very well use a different business network site. To not take that into account may lead to missing out on opportunities. While I concentrate on LinkedIn, if I were focused on European networking I would likely be working harder on Xing than on LinkedIn. If I were in the music business I'd likely be using MySpace for my networking, rather than LinkedIn.

After years of holding out, I just joined Linked In. Was impressed that it had stored the 50 or so invitations that I had been sent over the years - so had a bunch of invitations to accept right away. I am now connected to a mix of friends, co-workers, and a fair number of sales reps who call/have called on me. Finding it interesting to see the connections within 2 degrees of me. A friend recently landed a great job via a recruiter who found him on LinkedIn. Not looking right this second for a new job, but will some day - that finally convinced me to join.

It is good to research this. You are right about Myspace for musicians and I would check out Google's Orkut if you are in Brazil. However I live and work in Europe, have about a hundred business colleagues in Europe and I have never heard of Xing. I asked around a bit and no one I know has heard of Xing. But we all know LinkedIn. France, as an example of a non-English place, has over 76,800 LinkedIn users.

Until last year, Xing was called OpenBC, so casual users might not know it by the new name. I moved to Europe a few years ago from the Silicon Valley area. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I find that most of my North America based colleagues use LinkedIn while most of my European colleagues use Xing/OpenBC. Many of us use both, and hope for a merger...

fduvall

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that LinkedIn isn't global. It absolutely is. What I was trying to say was that, if you're in North America, there's no other business networking site that matters. Outside of North America, LinkedIn is still strong in many markets, and is the only site of its kind with true global reach, but there may be competitors that are strong on a regional basis -- for example, Xing in Germany.

I've used LinkedIn for awhile now (6-12 months) and I'm not sure I think it's all that useful. At least in my line of work, there are better job opportunities posted elsewhere, with the bulk of what I'm finding here is the same junk I'm bombarded with from recruiters making cold calls.

Maybe it's different in other industries?

I've been using LinkedIn for years now. Mostly around industry contacts and former colleagues. It's helped me here and then.

I also use Linkedin, with over 900 contacts. I only add those who I have met personally though, which seems to differ from most people on there.

I get asked to join by various people regularly and also in days gone by for Plaxo. Sometimes I've filled in my address. Then it asks me to put in my rolodex. I've never done that.

What is so great about this service? Why would anyone want to give up private information or take time on it? I'm not being facetious or negative but could not figure out what the benefits would be.

I joined LinkedIn recently.

Decided to finally join after I received a couple of invites from friends and realised that I can actually control my privacy on the service (eg, I'm listed as Firstname LastnameInitial and my "LinkedIn" list is private).

I see people put too much information on the service, and don't really want people looking at my "friends" so their privacy features work for me.

Have to spend some time working it all out, but will get there!