Like most new web sites with potential, I signed up for LinkedIn years ago when it came out. The problem with a networking site is that if no one is on it yet, it can’t do you much good. So I set it aside for the most part, lazily connecting to people as they popped up here and there until one day a critical mass would exist.

Recently I decided to give it another shot. I feel that social networking, particularly on Facebook, has reached a saturation of participants who are neither geeks nor young. This is important because it’s only when the tool steps off the stage of attention that anyone not interested in the tool itself will begin to find it useful.

So it goes for LinkedIn. I updated and optimized my profile, then uploaded my most recent address book to the site and found 200 people I knew personally or professionally who I hadn’t yet connected to. That was a bit less than half of the people I uploaded, 45 of whom I was already friends with.

For better or worse I did this over Thanksgiving weekend, and within a couple of days tripled my number of connections, exponentially increasing the 2nd and 3rd degree connections. As with Facebook, it’s been a nice opportunity to casually reconnect with people I did a limited amount of business with at one time or another. This is why burning bridges is not such a good thing. Luckily I figured that one out awhile ago.

One of the most powerful marketing devices in any market is testimonials, so I’ve been collecting recommendations from my richest client relationships. Not only is a bit of a confidence boost to read these and post them to my profile, it makes me take just a little more pride in my work. I’ve earned them, true, but I must continue to earn them if they will continue to speak for me.

LinkedIn was innovative in bringing a social networking brand to the business world, but I don’t see it as being on par in terms of overall innovation to Facebook. At least when concepts and features are borrowed, people will already know how to use them.

What’s missing? I’d really like to see some sort of conversation area where I could talk more about job opportunities, contracted work, etc. It seems that recommendations are key to getting a web gig from one of the million+ people in my network. Not that it should be easy, but getting on someone’s recommended short list should be simple through this tool, and that’s the main goal. It always takes more conversation to evaluate the match.

The status update is a start, but it’s a token gesture toward a social networking trend. To make it useful in the professional world, I would want to talk about a few things I’m working on, particularly projects that people might find interesting or that would even lead to business leads.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Web