About LinkedIn

[From Wikipedia] LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of October 2007, it had more than 15 million registered users, spanning 150 industries and more than 400 economic regions (as classified by the service).

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.

Joining LinkedIn

Simply go to the LinkedIn website at http://www.linkedin.com/ and scroll down until you see the "Join now" button - click on this button:

Next enter all of the information that is requested:

After entering all the information, you will get to the bottom of the screen, where there is a "Join LinkedIn" button - click on that button:

At this point, you are ready to "Build your Network".  Go to the "Home" tab and click on the "Add Contacts" link:

If you have a gmail or hotmail account, you can add your contacts directly.  Else click on the "Enter Contacts Manually" link and follow the instructions:

You will have to keep coming back to LinkedIn to enter additional contacts.  At some point, you will have built a social network that should be of value to you professionally.  Good luck!

Articles of Interest about LinkedIn

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/12/01/8394967/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkedin

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=334 (Facebook vs LinkedIn)

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/linkedins-dan-nye-responds-to-your-questions/

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/10/06/barack_obama_social_networking.html
 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

last updated 17 October 2007