LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world. It can be used to find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals. When you join LinkedIn, you can create a profile page that summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments. You can also connect with other's by inviting contacts to join LinkedIn and connect with you. This network can link you to a vast number of professionals and can be great for your work. Some of the good things about LinkedIn are that you can manage the information about yourself and make it available for others to view, you can find and be introduced to potential clients, service providers, and subject experts, and you can create and collaborate on projects, gather data, share files, and solve problems. In addition, people can gain new insights from their discussions with like minded professionals in private group settings. Users can also discover inside connections that can help them land jobs and close deals. Another good thing about LinkedIn is that you can post and distribute job listings to find the best talent for your company. On the other hand, there are some negative things about LinkedIn too. There are many "head hunters" or people that want to sell you something on this network, so users may receive many requests from them. Another negative is that you can't block certain individuals from seeing your profile page; you can only block your page as a whole so people can't view it, which LinkedIn users feel is pointless because then you can't collaborate with other professionals. Although the network is growing rapidly, there are some users who use abusive behavior and violate the "Terms of Service". For example, some people create an account with a fake name and use falsifying information on their profile page. Not only that, but people sometimes use other people's accounts and massively invite people that they don't know. Lastly, people can use the data in and unauthorized way. However, LinkedIn takes these violations very seriously and don't tolerate this abusive behavior. They contact users with a warning and how a violation of it will result in restriction or termination of their account. In addition, LinkedIn created an email address for people to report inappropriate behavior.

http://press.linkedin.com/