LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of August 2007, it had more than 13 million registered users, spanning 150 industries and more than 400 economic regions (as classified by the service).

Features

The main purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a LinkedIn user or not) to become a connection.

This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, each of their connections' connections (called 2nd degree connections) and also the connections of 2nd degree connections (called 3rd degree connections). This can be used, for example, to gain an introduction to someone you wish to know through a mutual, trusted contact.

• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by anyone in your contact network.

• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.

• Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either a pre-existing relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in the EU Safe Harbor Privacy Framework.

The newest (as of January 16 2007) LinkedIn feature is "LinkedIn Answers" . As the name suggests, the service, similar to Google Answers or Yahoo! Answers, allows LinkedIn users to ask questions for the community to answer. "LinkedIn Answers" is free and the main differences from the two previously mentioned services are that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.

Company info

LinkedIn's CEO is Dan Nye, while former CEO Reid Hoffman, previously an Executive Vice President of PayPal, remains as President of Product and Chairman of the Board. LinkedIn is located in Mountain View, California, and funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability (positive cash flow) in March 2006.

Privacy issues

• Non-members can check whether or not you are a member. Note that this is true of many other business directories as well, including Jigsaw, Spoke, Ziggs, and ZoomInfo.
• As of October 2006, there is no automated way to remove yourself from LinkedIn. The official method is to file a customer support ticket (see "Accessing and Changing Your Account Information" [1]). A possible workaround is to change your profile name to something unrelated to your real name.

Competitors

There are several competitor sites to LinkedIn offering online business networking, including ryze, Ecademy, Doostang, XING, Plaxo, and, increasingly Facebook.

See also

• Social network
• Business network
• Social software
• List of social networking websites
• Information Routing Group

External links

• LinkedIn web site
• The LinkedIn Corporate Blog Describes LinkedIn community roles and activities.
• Lee Hill's "Living LinkedIn" Blog And Open Invitation Reports day-to-day appearances of LinkedIn in the news and how LinkedIn works in practice.
• Poynter.org on how writers & journalists use LinkedIn.