LinkedIn is a social networking Web site designed for professionals that currently has over 37 million users. The Web site is free and allows you to contact members that you know from anywhere in the world.
Features
Individuals and groups, such as the Society for Technical Communication, can create profiles on LinkedIn. Registration is free for individuals. Once registered, members create a profile that describes your education, current and past jobs, and job experience. Members are able to give and receive recommendations. Recommendations are a featured item in LinkedIn where your colleagues comment on your abilities and are visible to other LinkedIn members.
Members are able to control how much profile information is visible to other LinkedIn members and can search for members via the following search types:
- People
- Jobs
- Companies
- Inbox
- Answers
- Groups
Benefits
Members can also use a variety of LinkedIn-branded applications to collaborate with others, create polls, and create presentations, to mention only three of the ten applications currently available.
Businesses can register and pay for the business LinkedIn service to locate potential employees.
Anu Patel, in her quest to locate information on what students are expected to be able to do once they graduate, signs up for a LinkedIn account. Using known contacts that are members of STC and in the LinkedIn network, she begins expanding her network to include other education professionals in the Technical Communications field to gather information she needs for her Instructional Program Review.
Completing his studies, Jimmy Chin, a student member of STC, is interested in expanding his network of contacts. He is hoping that someone will be able to help him locate a job once he graduates. Checking the STC TCBOK for information, he discovers that a lot of STC members are using LinkedIn. After creating an account, Jimmy leverages LinkedIn to contact classmates and rapidly starts to expand his network of contacts.
External Web Sites
- LinkedIn – CommonCraft explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzT3JVUGUzM
- LinkedIn – Learning Center: http://learn.linkedin.com/
- Society for Technical Communication on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/10/2b3/bb4
Credits
Brian Laing.
Providing technical communication > Collaboration > Working in teams > Technologies enabling team communication > Web 2.0