robwebb2k

A while back Guy Kawasaki put up a great post on the benefits of LinkedIn and, with the help of some folks at the company, laid out some solid steps to flesh out a LinkedIn profile. I have sent the link to his post to several friends in the past few weeks, so I thought I would include it here. LinkedIn has been described as MySpace for grownups, and while their are definite similarities, there are also a bunch of differences (on a side note, I think I would place Facebook solidly between these two – it has “add connections” and set appearance of LinkedIn with many of the social features of MySpace).

The biggest difference I see is between LinkedIn and MySpace is that, while it is clunky and ugly, MySpace is extremely interactive. Lots of messages are shot back and forth between friends and strangers. LinkedIn, one the other hand, has features like “In Mail” that allow for interactivity, but they are very rarely used. In my experience, the vast majority of people that are “connected” on LinkedIn route a total of two messages through the system: 1) an invitation to connect, and 2) an acceptance of an invitation. LinkedIn is definitely trying to change this, and in turn get more page views, ad revenue, and functionality out of the site through features like LinkedIn Answers and the below-the-radar LinkedIn Experts. One definitely similarity between the two networks is how users of both go to lengths to “primp” profiles. MySpace users add background graphics, songs, and even hire professional designers. LinkedIn users add job descriptions, solicit recommendations, and add connections.

In my experience, the best use of LinkedIn is to do background diligence on a potential professional contact. It gives you an easy way to see their background and education while giving you a glimpse into their professional network. It may be the case that down the road I’ll use LinkedIn to reconnect, but I have yet to use it to extract contact information thus far.