Business Opportunities Weblog

March 15, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Sree Sreenivasan At Poynter.org:

Like many journalists, I like to think that I am not just in the journalism business, but that I am also in the connecting business — helping various people find and connect with one another.

Connecting people, however, is a dicey game. Every time you connect a requester and a requestee, you are putting your own reputation on the line.

I used to rely exlusively on e-mail to make these connections, but for more than a year now, I have been depending on a free social networking Web site called LinkedIn.com.

You first create a free account, then fill out a profile of yourself and then explore the “find people” space to see which of your contacts is already in LinkedIn. Then you can ask them to connect with you. Once they do, they become your “first-degree” connections and their connections become part of your network, as “second-degree” connections.

The connections of those second-degree folks become your “third-degree connections.” All of this is done through the system. My math’s no good, but it adds up fast.

As of this writing, I have 317 direct connections; 43,000 second-degree connections and 1.4 million-plus connections in my network. I can search my network and contact anyone on it, but the reason the system works is that I can only connect with my direct connections directly. Everyone else has to be connected through the folks I know. They hear only from people they already know directly.

So it’s basically friends — or acquaintances — making the initial connection.

Photo by brokenarts.

In Internet, Networking, Tools | 0 Comments