Is LinkedIn the Forgotten Network?

February 4, 2010 in Business, Communications, LinkedIn, prospecting, social media by gtaylor | 6 comments

If you were to conduct a survey on the social networks people were aware of, the top three responses would most likely be Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.  It is true LinkedIn’s main users are business professionals, but there are some professionals that don’t utilize the network.  Is LinkedIn the forgotten social network?

What’s different about LinkedIn is people do not communicate as frequent as they do on Facebook or Twitter which may cause people to use other networks.  But LinkedIn is about business.  It’s probably safe to say that 60-70% of LinkedIn users do not have a Facebook page, and if they have a Twitter account, they update it less than ten times a week.

In this day and age, people want to communicate with someone and get an immediate response.  This is what makes Twitter such a popular network. LinkedIn, on the other hand, requires patience.  LinkedIn also requires face-to-face interaction, which is where some people get scared.

Twitter and Facebook has allowed people to get in touch with other’s that may be clear across the globe, and while you can have hours and hours of conversation with them, the likelihood of sitting down and talking to them (with personal friends being the exception) is slim.  If you are an avid user on LinkedIn, a meeting may result from your connections and conversations.

Some people may be turned off by LinkedIn because the basic account doesn’t offer them all the perks the upgraded (paid) account does, but the basic account does the job.

LinkedIn has to be viewed just like any business plan.  You have to have a purpose, you have to want to grow your network, and you have to be patient.  Things may not take off as quick as you want them to, but you can not just sit back and wait for people to come to you.

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  1. Raymond Brahler’s avatar

    Raymond Brahler on February 4, 2010 at 10:21 am

    I’m suprised to see MySpace still listed as top three. I’ve seen more use (professionally) with LinkedIn, Twitter and more personal with Facebook. Those who use Twitter for personal needs, provide too much personal information. It’s rare on Facebook.

  2. gtaylor’s avatar

    gtaylor on February 4, 2010 at 2:12 pm

    Raymond,

    Good points. Yes, MySpace continues to be one of the top 3 mentioned. Musicians still use it as a promotional source. LinkedIn does have it’s benefits, but since many of the users are working during the day, two-way communication seems to be delayed.

    Thanks for your comment.

  4. Joshua from Ohio’s avatar

    Joshua from Ohio on February 5, 2010 at 6:29 am

    I use LinkedIn for my professional life, my Twitter for more personal, MySpace to keep in touch with former classmates, Facebook for family (even though, I really don’t care for Facebook all that much) and MyChurch.org (which is becoming more of a giant Facebook App these days) to keep in touch with my Church community.

    Have any of you played around with Google Wave? What are your thoughts?

  5. gtaylor’s avatar

    gtaylor on February 5, 2010 at 8:01 am

    Joshua,

    Google Wave has potential to become something big. One thing that hurt them was the fact that only an elite group could use them at first because they only sent out invites to certain individuals. By doing that, they lost a large portion of potential users. Once people didn’t get the invites, they just resorted back to what they knew. Then, if they did get lucky enough to get an invite, Google only allowed you to send out a certain number of invites. Your network was small, and chances are, you weren’t able to have as much fun as you could have on Google Wave. Google’s going to have to re-launch Google Wave with a big promotion in order to pull a large audience.

    Thanks for your comment!