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LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site that is tailor-made for professionals. It lists over nine million registered users, representing more than 150 business sectors and over 400 economic regions.

In a nutshell, LinkedIn does away with the old networking practice of exchanging business cards with contacts who don't know you or your work. Through LinkedIn, your contacts, both old and new, need only go online to know right away what you're all about and what you have to offer.

How It Works

New members start by creating a profile enumerating their professional background. This establishes their identify in the online community and allows you to build a network of contacts. Through it, they can search for and be found by a host of former and current customers, colleagues and partners.

Features

The most useful feature of LinkedIn is that it provides as easy way to keep track of and touch base with a member's most important business contacts, referred to here as “connections.” Anyone can be listed as a connection, whether they are a current LinkedIn user or not.

Aside from their direct connections (first degree connections), LinkedIn also keeps track of second degree connections (the direct connections of your first-degree connections) and third degree connections (the direct connections of your second degree connections). As such, it significantly expands the scope of a member's business network quickly and effectively.

This expanded network makes it easy for a member to arrange a formal introduction with someone they wish to meet through a mutual contact. The other popular uses of LinkedIn are:

(1) Locating jobs, business opportunities or even people that are recommended by any of your connections.

(2) Listing of job openings in your organization and searching for potential hirees

(3) For job applicants, reviewing the background of HR managers and prospective empolyers and identifying which of their existing connections can arrange an introduction

The Gated Access Approach

LinkedIn also has a unique feature that prevents just any user from contacting anyone else. It's called the “gated-access approach” and it requires either a pre-existing relationship or an introduction by a current contact before a user can get in touch with any professional.

LinkedIn Answers

On January 16, 2007, LinkedIn introduced a new feature called LinkedIn Answers wherein members can post a question which other users in the community can answer. This service is free to members and, unlike Google Answer or Yahoo! Answers which run a similar service, LinkedIn Answers provides responses that are more business-oriented in nature. In addition, the LinkedIn service identifies the people who ask and answer the questions.