Monday, August 02, 2004

LinkedIn: Friendster for Grownups I've spent the last week or so noodling around with LinkedIn, which has enough good qualities to lift it about the title of Yet Another Social Networking Service. LinkedIn is clearly oriented toward professionals, and uses a stringent privacy policy and rules to protect users from unwanted contact. There's a surprising number of high-level managers and executives among the members, once you get in the door. The central idea is that influential people will be selective about passing along references, so you can rest somewhat assured that anyone who contacts you will have been sufficiently vetted. If you're three degrees away from your target, for example, you need two people to approve your request to contact them. Even so, I'd be skeptical if I hadn't already seen LinkedIn in action twice in the first week. First, I saw a well-connected match up a software developer and a non-profit group for a deal that would benefit both, and today, a job applicant moving from DC to Austin reached out to me about the job market here. On a related note, Stephen showed me this interesting paper on social networking from Danah Boyd that contains this great line: "Notably, most users fear the presence of two people on Friendster: boss and mother." 4:52:56 PM    comment []