Why You Need To Be Active On LinkedIn

My Webbeat.tv pal Pelpina Trip talks to Mike D. Merrill about LinkedIn and why it's important be on this social network - Webbeat.TV 157. Very informative interview!

Follow @webbeattv, @pelpina, @mikedmerrill, @greatbiggeek

LinkedIn The Social Network For Business Networking Files For IPO

In the good ole days a businessman's social network meant a lot of "pressing the flesh" and if you worked your network just right there might be a payoff. In today's world business folks are making connections by reaching out to their online network, mostly via LinkedIn an 8 year old Mountain View, California based social network for grown ups (and by grown ups I mean anyone who has, wants, needs a job, sales, or an introduction from an acquaintance or colleague... past or present).

Yesterday LinkedIn filed papers with the Securities Exchange Commission regarding it's intent to make an initial public offering (IPO). According to it's filing LinkedIn managed sales of $161.4 million in the first nine months of 2010 equaling profits of $10 million. I guess you could say that a down economy is probably not a bad thing for growing a user base for a service like LinkedIn, and a turn around will do it a great deal of good as 41% of it's revenues come from it's "hiring solutions".

What will make this one an interesting IPO to watch is that it's coming in advance of some other expected offerings and will undoubtedly test the waters and set investor expectations.

LinkedIn Attempts To Assure Users That It Does Not Face Privacy Issues Of Facebook

Speaking at the annual Mesh web conference in Toronto Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn's vice-president of international operations, tried to assure attendees that his company was very different from other social sites and did not face the same issues that Facebook is under fire for."It's not about your personal life or your social life, it's about your professional engagement and success," Rajan said, and  "That, by its very nature, helps us differentiate ourselves from other social networks."

Rajan also eluded to the fact that his companies users are more sophisticated and perhaps more educated and mature than say Facebook's users. "Everything you do on LinkedIn is tied to your professional identity and brand," Rajan said. "Nothing's anonymous. Because of that, people are pretty careful about what they say because they don't want to look uninformed." The average LinkedIn user is said to be 41 years of age with a household income of more than $100,000 per year.

I can go along with that... very different audience on LinkedIn, that's for sure.

Read more: CBC News 

Business being told to resist social networkings temptation without careful thought

Gartner analysts are warning companies to think carefully about employing social networking systems regardless of the temptations to do so. With FaceBook and LinkedIn both making moves to make their systems available, a Gartner report says "the hype around social networking doesn't necessarily mean it's a mature enough technology to make it a critical business requirement" according to CNet's News.com. It is suggested that the value from these systems is actually in the content and not the delivery mechanism which is fairly obvious, in my mind...