molly.com
Wednesday 31 August 2005
Are You Linked In?
FIRST FRIENDSTER THEN ORKUT and then a long line of social networking sites emerged, including the professionally-focused Linked In.
Over a year and a half ago I joined all the social networking sites I was invited to. I figured hey, who am I to say no to a party invitation? But social networking sites in general didn’t keep my attention, although I do retain an interest in social languages, such as XFN.
With the exception of Flickr, for which I have a passion that goes beyond words (that’s kinda the point of Flickr, yeah?) I became quickly disinterested in the more Friendster-like social networking sites.
In the past 30 days, though, it seems as though Linked In has become very active again. I’ve received nearly 20 invites from friends, many overseas but some in the U.S. as well. It got me to thinking: What on earth caused this renewed interest in Linked In?
Any ideas?
Filed under: society
Posted by: Molly | 7:01 pm |
August 31st, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Molly-
Both Paul Scrivens and D. Keith Robinson recently mentioned LinkedIn in their well-read blogs. I hadn’t heard of it before that, so I figure I’d check out what the fuss was all about. And, of course, I added you to my list.
I can’t speak for everyone, but for me personally, it was the posts on Scrivs’ and Keith’s sites that got me into it…
August 31st, 2005 at 8:28 pm
There has been recent changes in the policies at LinkedIn. Networks now only reach 3 levels down (used to be 4), so more people in your personal contacts list means more people in your network.
Also (for a fee, of course) you can be introduced to anyone in their system (now over 3 million strong).
Hope this helps,
–Russ
August 31st, 2005 at 8:51 pm
Linked-In facilitates professional contacts and career opportunities. Perhaps the state of our economy makes Linked-In a viable tool for simple job hunting, beyond the boring (and sometimes impersional) job sites like monster.com. I used to screen resumes from monster.com, in a past life, and sometimes those approaches are so daunting, they don’t have enough personality to it. Those of us who have survived in this industry know that being introduced by someone you know is more likely to get you the job, rather than your resume in the “circular file”
Love your site, Molly!
August 31st, 2005 at 9:21 pm
i’m assuming it picked up speed, because it’s no longer invitation only.
August 31st, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Dang! I’m linked to 140 folks — almost entirely former co-workers and members of other associations (like STC). I had not noticed much growth lately, but then I had not noticed the cutback from 4 to 3 levels, either. Some recruiters have blindly approached me for a linkage — I postpone them. If a recruiter approaches because [s]he has seen my profile and has a job in mind, fine. Note also that LinkedIn has LinkedIn Groups, like Tandem and Netscape alumni. Just signing up as having worked at a place does not put you in a group, even if one exists — you need to discover (or propose) that group and explicitly join. Once you have, you can reach any other member of the group without requiring an intermediary introduction.
Frankly, I found their interface confusing, because they offer contacts (just being able to reach a listed person), and connections (establishing a reciprocal linkage), but their descriptions (at least, used to) blur the distinction.
September 1st, 2005 at 12:04 am
Never even heard of it!
(Must be mostly a U.S. thing?)
September 1st, 2005 at 12:17 am
It’s been a very long time since I’m on Linked In, but I rarely got ‘linked’, just a few Belgian business contacts and that’s it. Suddenly I got an invitation from Jeff Croft… and the ball started rolling
September 1st, 2005 at 5:24 am
I stay so busy that I’ve never even looked at all the hulabaloo with the social networking sites. I had received an invitation from an acquaintance back in mid-July, and then again about a week later. Quite frankly, the email that was sent from LinkedIn wasn’t descriptive enough to tell me what it was, much less convince me to join. It mentioned using LinkedIn for “professional contacts” and mentioned a couple names we have in common (Molly, you were one of them … LOL)
I didn’t have time to check it out thoroughly, so I didn’t respond. (I was afraid it was more like one of those “I’m updating my address book” type things I get all the time. (They want you to join too and I haven’t checked them out either.
)
So do I gather here that some here find this type of site useful to their businesses?
September 1st, 2005 at 5:52 am
They actually added a couple of new things in LinkedIn recently. In particular, they now allow you to search for present and former colleagues, ie, people who work or used to work in the same company as you, at the same time. So by making it easier for people to connect, they make it more useful. That might explain the renewed interest in it.
September 1st, 2005 at 7:27 am
There’s a market of people out there who don’t jump on the latest and greatest. They wait for some uptake before jumping on board. That’s been the case for me… with everybody indicating an increase in interest, it makes sense for me to jump onboard, too.
September 1st, 2005 at 7:46 am
LinkedIn was discussed at length in the business section of my local paper a few weeks back. According to the article, and I think most people are starting to realize, that professional contacts are the single best way of finding employment as opposed to strictly web seaches like Monster or HotJobs. Mind if I add you to my list?
September 1st, 2005 at 7:52 am
I second Bruno - a quick search on linked in reveals you can now see people on there you knew but did not know were there before.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:35 am
Personally, I believe the recent resurgence in LinkedIn is due to the launch of O’Reilly’s Connection. Once it launched I got a few invites there, but actually started getting invites to LinkedIn again as well when it had been previously stagnant (for me, anyway)
It all contributes to Social Network Anxiety anyway…
September 1st, 2005 at 3:47 pm
I think that a special section should be created for people like me on LinkedIn who are not linked to anybody!
September 1st, 2005 at 10:24 pm
Yea a special section for people who ar enot in the in!!
September 2nd, 2005 at 5:51 am
I hadn’t noticed a flurry of activity on LinkedIn… Probably because my presence in the working world is somewhat limited… I’ve always thought the concept of LinkedIn was interesting. I only am “linked” to one other person… Probably cause I hate sending invites to people.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:16 am
Hi,
I built a site called workties.com -
Its kind of a different approach to networking that took me a couple of years working nights and weekends.
It ties together your former workplaces and co-workers in the context of a news, events, rss jobs and disappearing corporate history.
If anyone would like to start up a group - please do!
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:29 am
a new release if workties.com is planned for October. I’m in the process of updating the accessibility per Molly’s book - 250 HTML secrets book. I’m also scanning in the history of Centel form 1910 - 1990’s when it was merged out of existence. oh well!
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:09 am
I get so many of these invitations to places like Friendster and what not, that I start to treat them like those friends I have who keep asking me for money.
I ignore them.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:15 pm
i’ll be needing a digital assistant soon to keep track of all these disparate, fragmented and overly specific bits of online services…
September 5th, 2005 at 6:40 am
** UPDATE **
As you saw above, I thought it might be interesting to join one of these since I too had been dumping all my invites in the trash (sorry)…
I just had the most amazing thing happen. In a nutshell:
In my much younger years, I modeled. I had one photographer in FL that I worked with a lot and was a really dear friend. But time came between us and we lost track about 15 years ago.
This week, I sent one of my invites to a copywriter I work with a lot (we’ve never met in person as we’re in different states). She joined and added one other person. I clicked her name and saw a REALLY familiar name, Milt Webb. But living in a different city (Atlanta) then where I last left him. And he is also a web developer, which isn’t where I left *my* Milt last.
So I emailed and told him my maiden name, didn’t give him any other info at all, and just said, show me if it’s you. Back came one of my old modeling pics he had taken. LOL We spent three hours on the phone last night catching up from the past fifteen years (as well as talking code, of course.
)… how ironic that, when we re-found each other, we were again working in the same field. Where I used to be in front of the camera and he used to be behind it, maybe now, I will do the CSS/XHTML and he can do my PHP development. LOL
I like LinkedIn.
September 16th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
I went on a brief LinkedIn rampage to built up a few links following Stephanie Sullivan’s comments about it at Community MX. I think several other people did the same. I was already there, but hadn’t bothered to contact anyone. I got a kick out of bringing in a programmer and an accessibility guru who weren’t listed before, both of whom I have worked with, and both of whom are excellent but fairly unknown.
September 23rd, 2005 at 6:00 am
SimplyHired, a new job search site that takes jobs from all over the web, also have a cool LinkedIn integration - when you find a job you like, you simply click a button and it shows you if there is anyone you are connected to at that company, through LinkedIn. I was amazed on a few searches that I could reach people at quite a few companies if I needed to.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
At first, I joined linked-in reluctantly - got a few invites and finally accepted one. I then ignored it for at least a year or two. Then I noticed that one of my friends had something like 4000 connections and his business starting booming like crazy. So I decided not to be fussy with who I connected with, it opens up a lot of connections to people in my industry. So I just decided to connect to anyone. Now I have a lot of catching up to do! If anyone wants to connect, just mail me: linkedin(at)singapore.com
March 16th, 2007 at 8:29 am
[…] Some time I ago, I seemed to be getting a lot of requests to add people as contacts at LinkedIn, for which I was already a signed up member. I could only put it down to a post-conference flurry of activity or something that happened after a blog post somewhere (I can remember Molly posting something similar a couple of years ago). Whatever, I obviously wasn’t getting it, but I intended to put all that right when I bumped into Steve Ganz at SXSW this year. Having spoken to him for some time, I’ve come away feeling encouraged and, basically, thinking that a service like LinkedIn is only as good as: […]
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:05 pm
“I can’t speak for everyone, but for me personally, it was the posts on Scrivs’ and Keith’s sites that got me into it… ”
Yup, that was my point of no return too.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
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January 12th, 2008 at 11:15 am
very thanks
January 29th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
thanx
March 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Wow, is this all. Yes i am Linked in.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I can remember of that. Yes
May 28th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
thanks for your sharing