LinkedIn

I finally got around to joining LinkedIn yesterday. I say "finally", because it seems I've been a bit of a laggard on this.

Last year I accepted an invitation to a free month's trial of eAcademy, pursued it with enthusiasm, as it seemed like a great idea, but found it virtually useless, so didn't renew at the end of the month. Only to discover I'm still registered to this day, still get loads of emails from them, and can't unsubscribe without re-entering my (long-deleted) account. Hmm.

But at the time, a couple of contacts invited me to LinkedIn, and suggested I try that instead. I didn't - how many networks could I possibly need? But I've found more and more people mentioning it. A few weeks ago, in casual conversation with a couple of friends - one in HR, one in IT - I found they were both members.

So yesterday I joined. They told me the average new member already knows 15-20 people on LinkedIn - I found more than 40 within an hour. So I'm going to give it a whirl. Just with one of the free personal accounts - I'm not yet ready to spend whatever the Sterling equivalent of $200 for a souped-up business account. But we'll see what value there is in it. I'm open to suggestions as to how to make more of it.

http://www.linkedin.com/