LinkedIn: Taking a Chance, Making Connections
Next to public speaking, approaching people we don’t know is one of the greatest fears people list when admitting what makes them nervous or apprehensive. It seems that the internet is helping us all get over that. All one need do is make a MySpace account to see just how brazen strangers can be. This kind of matchmaking contact is not networking, though.
To me, at least, networking is making contact with people with a specific purpose in mind whether it be common business concerns or mutual advantage. From my own observations, it seems that making these kind of connections can be more difficult and a bit more nerve wracking. Make a pass at a pretty girl and the worst you’ll get is the cold shoulder. Try to make contact with a giant in your field and you may become the laughing stock of the next corporate conference. This is where LinkedIn comes into the picture.
LinkedIn avoids the pettiness of MySpace and Facebook to get down to the nitty gritty of business networking. There’s no profile picture, no music playing on your profile page. It’s all about what you do, who you know, and who you want to know. LinkedIn will even allow you to get in touch with someone who you don’t know through common contacts. Using an “Introduction” you can ask one of your contacts to introduce you to one of his/her contacts and “voila!”
There are a few missing pieces on LinkedIn, though. I wish there was a network visualization tool (if there is one and I’m missing it let me know) so you could see the whole of your network and see which of your contacts know each other. I also wish you could sort your contacts by categories (again, if this can be done and I missed it let me know).
Do you use LinkedIn? Why or why not? What has it done for you?
28 January 2007 | Intellagirl, networking | Comments
Navigation
Pages
- About
- C.C. Chapman
- Daniel Livingstone
- Mark Bell
- Mitch Maxson
- Ryan Hupfer
- Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins
Categories
- Uncategorized
- News
- Opinion
- Intellagirl
- Ryan Hupfer
- Mark Bell
- ethos
- Mitch Maxson
- academia
- self-promotion
- mobile
- networking
- Planning
- blogs
- success
- Good deeds
Archives
Meta
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb » | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
Copyright 2006 You.
2 Responses to “LinkedIn: Taking a Chance, Making Connections”
1 bryan 28 January 2007 @ 11:10 pm
glad you joined-up! who is that handsome devil you owe it all to, I wonder? I am already checking out who you add as contacts. you are the fastest adopter I have seen so far.
2 bryan 28 January 2007 @ 11:11 pm
ps I don’t think there is a network vis tool. see mark over at 3pointd for a comment on that last week concerning a similar piece of software intended for use in sl.