LinkedIn: The official business network
With much of today’s society caught up in Facebook and Twitter, not many have thought about the remarkable networking possibilities with LinkedIn. Based on the platform of professional networking rather than mainly social networking, this rather small company that started in December 2002 announced its 50 millionth member last week. Now why is it that this number seems incomparable to Facebook’s 300 million users when in reality it means so much more?
The main reason is that Linkedin applies to a completely different platform of networking. It focuses on a network associated with white-collar professionals from around the world. So although this 50 million people might seem small, it actually currently represents 10% of the world’s professionals and with the site now signing up a new member every second of every hour or every day, it will not take long before the rest of the world’s professionals start using the LinkedIn universe.
Now what is it that makes this networking site so popular among professionals? It is the fact that in modern society, people are much more responsible for their own careers and with the idea of being an entrepreneur. By using strong ties that can associate two professionals (such as career, location, previous company experience, etc.), a professional using this site can communicate with a broad range of fellow professionals with the potential of finding a job, old collegiate, or just a source of communication. An example of this source of communication can allow a doctor associated with kidney transplants to communicate with another doctor of the same practice (due to the strong tie of career) to ask questions about a potential case or even a new medicine that has entered the market.
This idea of being proactive with connections between people in order to display skills and communicate among professionals is what has led to LinkedIn’s success. It has allowed members to reach out to a network of like-minded professionals by allowing access to a unique collaborative business environment.
It has also been noted that when companies look for potential employees they use LinkedIn to see if there is a strong or weak link between the potential employee and the company’s position being offered.
Do you have a LinkedIn account? If not, what is stopping you from joining a network that allows for endless career opportunities in the professional network.
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