Many of us belong to social networks but most of us do not think of them in terms of business or work. There are a few social networks that focus on those who work. LinkedIn is one of those sites (and the most popular). These sites are geared towards anyone who works, regardless of career or industry. Why, you may ask, would you want to use a site like this? Well first, it allows you to either reconnect or stay connected to current and past friends and coworkers. Second, the site is a great place to leverage connections to find a new job. Unless you’ve experienced one of these sites it is hard to explain the benefits of registering, but this is clearly another way to extend your job search.
Today’s post will focus on several business social networks.
Business Social Networks:
- LinkedIn - According to Wikipedia, LinkedIn is “a business- social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking”. This site has become very popular over the last year. At the end of 2007, the sited had 3.2 million visitors per month and by May of this year there were more than 24 million registered users across well over 100 industries. The site allows users to link to colleagues from current and past employers, schools and any other group that may be defined. One of the features I like best is the “degrees of separation”. The site will show you how you may know a third party through an existing connection. Linked has job search functions as well formats which allow you to showcase your background. Clearly the “best in class” from what I’ve seen.
- Meettheboss - This is a brand new site from what I can tell and seems to be focused on Financial Services (a way to differentiate from other sites). One item I do not like is that it forces you to add your company website url as part of the registration. Two issues with this. First, you may not want to advertise the company you work for and second, what happens if your company is small and does not have a website (yes, there are still companies without websites!)? Unlike LinkedIn, there does not seem to be a way to search for people you may know. The interface is nice, but the site looks thin on functionality. I will keep an eye on this site to see how it fairs, but I’m not sure I get it yet.
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[...] Are You LinkedIn? – Original reviews of LinkedIn and meettheboss.com [...]
I read about MeettheBoss in the International Herald Tribune business section at the end of last year. They were comparing the site to LinkedIn, they also had a top finance executive who seemed to love Meet the Boss. I think it has become a highly used business tool in the financial community. I think they have something like 30,000 members now of just financial executives. I would like to get on there to see what all the fuss is about. I dont think i’ll the fit the criteria though.
Lauren,
Thanks for your comments. I briefly covered meettheboss in the post http://careeralley.com/careers/leveraging-social-networks-for-career-management/
[...] by now you are definitely not with it. I originally reviewed LinkedIn in the post Are you LinkedIn? and it is worth reading this post, but LinkedIn has grown a lot since the post. It is now [...]
I don’t think it’s necessarily accurate to say that “Clearly, the value of any of these sites is determined by the number of people who are registered”, as Linked has a far more blurred boundary between the social and the business in their model for a network platform. One need not be business affiliated to join Linked, whereas with MeettheBoss one does. With MeettheBoss one is vetted prior to accepted membership and one also has to provide information on the business affiliated to. I this respect it is true thar Linkedin enjoys more success in numbers, but MeettheBoss enjoys more focused business-oriented and business driven membership. It is difficult to negotiate a fair comparison, as wikipedia quotes Linked as being “general but mostly for business” whereas MeettheBoss is a designated business network sight.
I have recently written a blog post on this issue of comparing business network sights
http://hubpages.com/hub/web_20-business-networking-sites
check it out and comment. My aim is to generate some discussion on our won conceptualisations of “business networking”, my Masters degree got me interested in cultural understandings of the boundaries between social and work and how we reflect these through our choices of media.
Ahywho, thanks for reading.