Vs. 
I've been using the Web 2.0 professional networking service called LinkedIn. I blogged about it last year here (I, know - the dark ages in terms of 2.0 apps.). I've been waiting to see if other similar services (VisiblePath, etc.) would take off before I invested time in seriously committing to it.
In January, Guy Kawasaki posted a summary of 10 ways to use LinkedIn. This post inspired me to add a few contacts and consider what all I could do with it.
One of the reasons I signed up for LinkedIn was the price. Free is good. The other was simplicity, including only about a two minute's investment to sign up. You can complete your profile all at once or over time. And, although it's a professionally oriented site, it doesn't have to be serious - feel free to sign up as a narcissistic ego manic or blogger, same thing. I've been a member for a few months now.
Now look what's happening. Tech Crunch reports LinkedIn will, over the next few months, open source it's platform in response to Facebook. Hmm, I'm rethinking my commitment.
You can go to facereviews.com for all things Facebook. And here's how you get all of your LinkedIn contacts over to facebook.
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I started to use LinkedIn until those friendly little emails began dropping into my inbox from people I knew asking if I would join their LinkedIn network. If I didn’t respond, I’d get repeated little friendly emails every week or so from the same people. It soon dawned on me that my friends weren’t actually sending me those emails, but that LinkedIn was doing it “on their behalf.” These emails even appear to come from these folks’ personal or work email addresses, which seems like spoofing to me.
Something about that fakeness triggered a nerve in me, causing my eyes to twitch and my brain to refuse to use LinkedIn.
My mind may change, but I still can’t seem to get past this…
-T
Cynthia,
I use LinkedIn but don’t know that I’ve seen any real professional benefit. I was able to reconnect with a couple of friends from college. I signed up for FaceBook last week but really don’t have time for to learn/commit to something new, unless there is some real benefit.
Facebook does seem to be the hot thing right now, and I went there because Scoble has talked about it a lot lately, and I’ve seen it several other places as well.
I haven’t had the experience Tobias has had. Now, granted, I’ve only been using LinkedIN for seven months, and I’ve been a paid member for the duration. So, it’s possible the spoofed emails were a common practice last year, and maybe this is something only free members experience.
But what I think is happening is that one or more of Tobias’ friends created an account, ten uploaded their entire address book, then invited everybody to sign up using the pre-supplied invitation template. (LinkedIN “helpfully” allows users to invite their entire address book full of non-Linked contacts.)
Once Tobias’ friend(s) hit the invite button, LI registered a new invitation and issued an email. And even though Tobias was already a member, it’s likely the email address he was invited under was sufficiently different from his registered account that LinkedIN had no idea he already signed up. And then, when he didn’t respond, he got the friendly “reminder” email. And since all of this was unsolicited on his part, it smells like spam. Even though, I suspect, it was a someone with his name in their address book that initiated the contact.
I use both FaceBook and LinkedIN. My network is not large on either service: on FaceBook I have about 50 contacts. On LinkedIN my first-degree network is nearing 100 contacts.
There are obviously some similarities between the two services: They are both social networking tools. They both list contacts. They both allow you to keep in touch with your “network.” They both allow you to form loose connections with people you don’t know. They both allow you to maintain tighter connections, if you want it. They both allow you to present a “face” to the world in the form of some kind of profile. And they both allow you to connect with people you’ve long lost contact with through data-mining your contacts list and reminding you of things like birthdays, and etc.
But there are far more differences than there are similarities, and I think this is very healthy. Sure, FB and LI are “in competition” in that the social networking space is now offering users social information overload and you have to start limiting exactly how many profiles it’s worth maintaining (as a job-searcher I have probably 90 profiles floating around in cyberspace right now).
Frankly, the “flatter” these tools become, the less useful they are. In other words if everybody who’s online is a part of the service, then the service becomes no more useful than a Google search. What’s makes each of these services useful is that they both cater to a different kind of audience. On LinkedIN, the tendency is for users to be professionally oriented and career-minded. You won’t find many teens on LinkedIN. You won’t find many frat-boys looking for a weekend hookup. And you won’t find a lot of “fun” stuff to do. Though LinkedIN can be fun in it’s own way (especially the Answers section), that’s not what it’s for. It’s less about the “socializing” than it is the networking between people who work for a living.
I enjoy both services. I enjoy LinkedIN for demonstrating and highlighting my expertise. I enjoy FaceBook for keeping up with what my friends are doing and for maintaining a daily “presence” feed through the Twitter-like Status update. LinkedIN has an “authority” that FaceBook lacks, in my mind. I have invited coworkers and old bosses to post recommendations on endorsements on my profile at LinkedIN. I wouldn’t dream of inviting them to do something similar on FaceBook.
For me, it’s worth having accounts on both systems. After landing a job, I may downgrade my LinkedIN account to free status, but for now I want it to be super-easy for potential employers to contact me.
I do hope LI offers more features. It’d be nice to be able to display feed items on my LinkedIN blog, it’d be nice to post photos. It’d be nice to get more feed updates, and to be able to integrate LI with services like Plaxo more tightly.
But all in all, it’s not an either/or for me. It’s a both/and.
Regards,
Rich
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LinkedIN Profile
FaceBook Page
BlogRodent Blog
Oh, by the way, I have blogged on LinkedIN recently. You may be interested in the post, wherein I describe the benefits of using LinkedIN:
Will Social Network for Food
Rich
BlogRodent
Rich,
Sounds like you’re probably correct. It all probably just caught me on a month when my cereal ran out, coffee was switched to decaf, or some other mini-storm of life took place.
Now I might just try it again!
-T
Rich - both/and makes sense.
Tobias - in that case - wanna accept an invitation?
I use both but have found Facebook mre helpful. Seems like Linkedin is going the FB route so a more serious choice may have to be made.