LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site with over 100 million members, mainly used for professional networking. LinkedIn allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. However, if the recipient of an invitation selects “I don’t know”, this counts against the person inviting them, and after five such “IDKs” a member cannot invite another to connect without first supplying their recipient mail address.
What is LinkedIn?
A contact network is built up consisting of direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact. These connections can then be leveraged to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one’s contact network.
- Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
- Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
- Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
- Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.
- Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.
- LinkedIn allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given company in the search box, statistics provided may include the ratio of female to male employees, the percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of headquarters and offices, or a list of present and former employees.
Additional Features
- LinkedIn Answers allows users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.
- LinkedIn Polls.
- A mobile version of the site gives access to a reduced feature set over a mobile phone while native apps exist for various smartphone platforms like Blackberry, iPhone and Android.
- LinkedIn DirectAds offers a form of sponsored advertising.
- LinkedIn offers an “applications platform” that allows other online services to be embedded within a member’s profile page. Among the initial applications were an Amazon Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart, WordPress and TypePad application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.
- LinkedIn allows businesses to list products and services on company profile pages; permitting members to “recommend” products and services and write reviews.
- LinkedIn Groups supports the formation of interest groups, which support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the group owners and managers. Groups may be private, accessible to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read.