So what are these networks and what can they do for me?

February 10th, 2008

Erika D. Smith

A few weeks ago, one of my semi-tech-savvy colleagues stopped me to ask about the increasingly popular business social network LinkedIn.com. She, like I’ll bet many of you who sit in cubicles or offices day after day, had received an e-mail with the subject line: “Invitation to connect on LinkedIn.” It read, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” and it was signed, most likely, by some barely remembered colleague from another time and another company.What’s this LinkedIn thing, she wanted to know, and why would anybody want to connect to her? And once connected, what exactly was she supposed to do?

All valid questions. Not questions I’d ask, but then again, I’m a social-network fiend. If there’s a new social network out there, I’m probably on it. But not everyone is like that. Lorraine Ball, president of Carmel marketing company Roundpeg and a member of the local social network Smaller Indiana, said it’s a generational thing. “I think that 90 percent of the people who sign up and register have no idea what to do,” she said of LinkedIn and Smaller Indiana. LinkedIn relies on the three-degrees-of- separation rule — that each of our friends or colleagues knows someone whom we would like to know. In the real world, that’s what an after-work drink at McCormick & Schmick’s, an introduction and a handshake are for. In the virtual world, that’s what sending an “invitation to connect on LinkedIn” is for.

Businesspeople connect to one another to create a large network of colleagues they can hit up for references or introductions to others, or for jobs. (Remember, most jobs aren’t advertised.)“What I use LinkedIn for is: Who do I know and who do they know?” Ball said. LinkedIn is nothing like Facebook or MySpace, with virtual sheep-throwing contests and flashy profiles that take forever to load. If Facebook is a frat party, then LinkedIn is a staff meeting that starts at 7 a.m. sharp.LinkedIn was actually one of the first niche social networks on the Web. It was founded in 2003, got off to a slow start, but is now the seventh-largest social network on the Web, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. It grew more than 160 percent from August 2006 to August 2007 — faster even than Facebook.That growth has led the way for several upstart competitors. The most interesting among them, in my opinion anyway, is NotchUp.com. (Yes, I’ve already signed up.)

The concept is this: Searching for a job candidate is an expensive, time-consuming pain in the butt for companies. It’s so aggravating that they would pay to avoid it if they could find the perfect candidate the first time around.

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Erika D. Smith
(317) 444-6424
erika.smith@indystar.com.