For years, I've resisted. Every so often, an invite would appear in my inbox from a friend, asking me to join their "professional network on LinkedIn," and every time I would ignore it, saying to myself "Do I really want to link to another networking site, social, business or otherwise?"
I had the same reaction when the Friendster social networking service first came to prominence in 2003, saying to myself, "What in the heck do I need this for?" But after a few more invites came in, I finally joined and had a fun six month adding goofy pictures and commenting on other peoples' profiles until I finally said to myself, "Hey, this is kind of boring."
So while I still have a profile on Friendster, I seldom look at it. Instead, I jumped ship to MySpace -- mostly on a lark -- and, for awhile, have enjoyed all the cool new music I get exposed to, and some of the lost friends who have contacted me, and all the weird "invites" I get from scantily clad women which are just spammers/scammers in disguise. But after about a year of adding "friends" -- I'm up to 153 -- I've grown bored with MySpace as well. FaceBook? Nah, I've never even bothered.
Networked Out
Which explains my ambivalence towards LinkedIn. Call it Internet Networking Overload (INO), but posting another profile on the Internet and chatting with friends just doesn't interest me much anymore. While I know LinkedIn is supposed to be the "adult MySpace" based more on building and cultivating business relationships than trading YouTube clips of bulldogs riding skateboards, I just couldn't muster the strength.
I finally changed my tune though after receiving a critical mass of LinkedIn invites from fellow writers, editors, photographers, and public relations people. If all these colleagues of mine were so serious about LinkedIn, there must be something to it, right? After finally getting on board with LinkedIn a couple weeks ago, I'd have to say "Yes and no."
Linking In
On the positive side, the speed with which I was able to build a profile and make connections to business associates on LinkedIn was impressive. Perhaps the best thing about the service is that once you create a profile, LinkedIn will search your email address book and find any contacts who already have LinkedIn accounts.
Within the span of a few days I was able to build a decent 53-person network of connections. And instead of silly names or handles -- as on MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster etc. -- each person in my contact list is identified by their real name, job title, and business. While all these folks are already in my email address book, it's nice to have them all in one place with their positions, experience, and connections just a click away.
Also, now that I have a profile up, other connected colleagues have been pinging me with invites to join their LinkedIn network. The end result is a web of trusted business connections who I could easily contact for work-related activities, such as finding a job, recommending a possible employee, scheduling a meeting, etc. etc.
What Do I Do Now?
On the downside, after playing around with media-rich sites such as MySpace and others, LinkedIn feels woefully underpowered to me, resembling nothing more than a web-connected database. While some might argue that this Spartan approach cuts through the unnecessary clutter of other social networking sites to instead just focus on "business," I've found it terribly bland and unintuitive. Why does doing business have to be so boring?
Whenever I log on to my LinkedIn account now, I always wonder what to "do" there? While other networking services let you send an email directly