I just had a technology recruiter contact me as a result of viewing my Linked-in profile. He was looking to hire someone with certain credentials for a client. After further discussion we may have opened up some future possibilities for our students. This is the first time I’ve seen a direct benefit for the college as a result of some of my social media activity. Up to now the only benefit has been to expand my personal learning network.
Linked-in seems to have exploded within my real world contacts over the past 4 months. Is Linked-in going to capture the professional profile share of the market? Facebook certainly hasn’t been able to pull it off despite trying to improve their Public Profiles/Pages. Although I personally feel like these applications have been around forever, social media applications are still very much the wild west. Loyalty is fairly fluid and there is still plenty of time for the tables to turn in all the social media circles. I would love to see a stat on the overlap for people with accounts across Windows Live, Facebook, Google, MySpace, Linked-in, Friendfeed & Twitter. I think that stat alone would demonstrate how any one of the big guns can make a strong comeback in any area of social media. I’m amazed at how slow google is moving in this space, but I may be a little biased in my perspective and have lost touch with the practical application of this technology for the average user. I think Google have the user base and culture to make huge strides in this area. Microsoft Live still seems to be unable to shake that MSN monkey off their back, but Facebook could be their saviour if handled correctly. I only hope the pair of them can escape the whole walled garden mentality.
