Comments on: Start Networking Online

By: Sharon Willemsen

Sharon Willemsen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:54:22 +0000

Hi! I would like to suggest another up and coming professional networking site not listed on here. Konnects.com is a great one!

By: Christine Tranthim-Fryer

Christine Tranthim-Fryer — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 10:03:00 +0000

This article is well thought out and shows the outstanding benefits of using social networking. Since the beginning of time people have gained work and business through social networking thats a fact. After all we tend to build trust with people we know this then will lead to them either offering us a job or giving us their business.
At Netprofiled we have developed an online education programme ‘The Success System’. This educates people in the processes and strategies that one needs to implement to socially network through the Internet, our site went live in 2002. We were quite visionary because we took what had been happening in the real world into the virtual world before many others. Netprofiled has been conducting courses in this area for many years.
We now live in an age of interconnectedness that will enable even the most insignificant of us to become significant. The Internet and the social networking availble to all, will break down the barriers and will now only allow the most talented to get ahead. What a wonderful age we are now experiencing.

By: Hans Gieskes

Hans Gieskes — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:45:00 +0000

Good points shally. Majority of people are more focused on the scary parts of social networking and even more so of social networking technology. They have to get their feet wet in order to enjoy swimming and its effect on their health.

The fundamental critical succes factors for succesful networking are still the same: interpersonal skills, karma, patience and a big heart. However scientific foundations built by people like Dunbar, Granovetter and Milgram are important too.

What’s most intriguing is that all their research was done long before the internet, cell phones, instant messaging etc. Has technology fundamentally changed their theories?

Dunbar’s ‘150=max’ theory: probably still valid, but Granovetter’s ’strength of weak ties’ proved that even a weak / faint relationship can bring great power to you, and social networking tools enable you to create and maintain faint relationships with lots of people. (probably 2% of LinkedIn’s 8.5m people maintain more than 500 connections).

Milgram’s ‘Six degrees of separation’ has always been misinterpreted as that all of us are only six degrees away from the other 7 billion folks. That’s not true, only a very small percentage of people is, and again I reckon that all the tools available nowadays may increase that select population somewhat.

However, I’m more interested in the others, in our industry terms the 5 million hiring managers who do not have the luxury of a professional recruiter on their team.

Two conclusions:

1. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

2. The internet and all the social networking tools have a great equalizing / leveling effect: helping people who do not have natural ‘connecting’ skills to do a little better. Say Gladwell is right about only 4% of people being real connectors; if technology can help the other 96% improve their networking results by 5% the impact will be profound.

Also on sourcing and recruiting.

Happy New year,

By: Glenn Gutmacher

Glenn Gutmacher — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:37:00 +0000

Shally’s article about the professional networking sites is very useful. I’m glad to see he went beyond LinkedIn.com and even discussed tools like Plaxo.com which aren’t necessarily considered to be part of this category. I’m surprised he didn’t mention things like Jigsaw.com and CardBrowser.com which would seem to be a related networking category via the e-business card route. I’m also wondering what people think of the new category geared to recruiters in particular to leverage their ‘dormant’ candidates such as Recruitn.com and BlueChipExpert.com ?