April 8, 2008
What’s the point of online networking?
When Jérôme Kerviel was named as the alleged rogue trader at Société Générale, journalists immediately trawled social networking websites in search of facts about his career and personal life. But in spite of the risk of such (perfectly legitimate) intrusion, hordes of business people are still willing to lay out details of their lives on sites such as LinkedIn, Xing and Facebook. Why?
Given that these are predominantly smart, forward-thinking people, I can only assume that the benefits of membership outweigh the privacy risks. Over the next week or so, I’d like to try to quantify and analyse some of these benefits. I’m particularly intrigued by the potential for conflict between the trend for ‘Brand Me’ self-promotion and the ‘keep your head down’ discretion expected by more traditional employers.
A reasonable starting point for this inquiry is an old blog post by Guy Kawasaki, a US venture capitalist and web pundit, in which he suggests ten ways to use LinkedIn (he’s also just done something similar for using Facebook). Aside from the obvious goal of trying to unearth new customers, he suggests that employers can use the likes of LinkedIn as a source of references during the interview process - just approach someone from the network of past and present employees at the interviewee’s old company. That’s the theory anyway.
There is one category of worker for whom online social networks appear to be a particular blessing: the self-employed, particularly those working as consultants. James Amoroso, an independent food industry analyst and consultant, told me in an email that LinkedIn is “brilliant” for “straight business networking… especially if you are in business on your own”.
For instance, the system allows him to track his contacts’ contacts - knowledge that could lead to profitable new connections for him. However, he stressed that this does not translate into a licence to pester second-degree acquaintances willy-nilly. He said it can be counter-productive to approach someone to whom you have only a very tenuous link. If too many of these people say they don’t know you, the privilege of approaching other members directly is withdrawn, he explained.
Clearly, networking sites can also help an employee to find a new job. Sociological research has shown that distant acquaintances can be extremely influential in guiding someone into a new role. The likes of Xing and LinkedIn teem with such “weak ties“, waiting to be exploited by the restless. Conversely, imaginative employers and their headhunters can use such sites to poach new staff.
But social networking present challenges for more traditional and hierarchical companies that adopt new technologies and working practices slowly. For instance, is it politic for an employee to nurture external relationships online, right under the nose of their current employer? And what is the etiquette for publicly networking with employees at rival organisations?
To these and other questions, I don’t pretend to have anything other than sketchy answers and suppositions at this stage prior to an interview with Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn’s managing director for Europe, on Friday. All tips and anecdotes - or questions for Kevin - gratefully received.
LinkedIn is worth serious money to me, in that it has amplified my decent set of initial contacts by 10,000. This means that, whatever problem to do with Asia that I am asked to throw light on,I can call up the names and career details of 200-500 specialists living in a particular country. I pay LinkedIn for the right to send direct “InMails” to people who seem particularly relevant. If the approach is worded carefully, I can get perfectly frank comments on whatever problem I am researching.
To give one small example. I was asked to throw light on the background to a potential banking merger somewhere in ASEAN - a part of Asia I do not know particularly well. Within two days, I had identified someone who had studied at the London School of Economics (giving me a hook to work with), who had worked for one of the banks, and was currently high up the second one. My approach got me 2000 words giving me a warts and all analysis of the business and personal environment surrounding these two banks.
In recent months, I have got similar types of response as I have researched Korean banks, Japanese component suppliers, ASEAN telecoms, plus a couple of semiconductor industry problems, in addition to a pharmaceutical one.
I also run seminars on Asian technology. If I need to identify people to speak on a particular topic (real case, the aviation sector in India and/or China), then a quick set of approaches to relevent people identified in LinkedIn, will almost certainly find me serious prospective speakers.
At the moment, LinkedIn works. Approaches currently can only be made if one of your contacts is willing to recommend you to one of their contacts OR if you are willing to pay for the right to send a limited number of unsolicited approaches per month to people where you don’t have initial connections. It is not possible to do blanket emails to people in the system (so spam is difficult). There are ways of punishing people who make inappropriate approaches.
The flipside is that most people expose their contacts to public scrutiny, which can give information to competitors. However, you do have a choice here. You can choose to hide your connections (most people don’t) so that people seeing your record will only see that you have, say, 150 connections on the system - but they will not be able to see, say, that you’ve suddenly added 20 serious contacts in a particular sector.
I can see some problems for LinkedIn as its popularity increases. I can see heavyweights withdrawing from the system to avoid being overloaded by approaches from the likes of myself. For the moment, though, the system works.
Posted by: Louis Turner | April 9th, 2008 at 5:23 am | Report this commentI agree with most of the points mentioned by Louis (who seems to be an astute user of LinkedIn).
I started using LinkedIn more as a way to keep in touch with classmates and former colleagues. But over time, it has also fetched some unique career opportunities for me.
And I hope that LinkedIn continues in the right direction for a long time to come.
Posted by: Girish Patil | April 9th, 2008 at 9:24 am | Report this commentI echo the comments above. I started using likedin because I am about to relocate to another country. I therefore started contact with my ex colleagues from work and friends from Uni. Most of these individuals have substantial positions, so their contacts might come in handy. However, I am extremely carefull of whom do I invite. So far I have not made any approaches to contacts in other peoples networks unless I knew them personally before. However when the time to relocate comes, I will be sending some InMails and contacting selected individuals carefully. For me the positives outweigh the negatives for the time being.
Posted by: Juan C | April 9th, 2008 at 10:56 am | Report this commentI started using facebooks because my pals also used it. My first impression from the system was that you may be given too much information away but then when you really learn to use it, it can become an amazing Public Relations machine.
Now that my contacts know more about me and I know more about them makes it easier to make business links that really interest you.
Cheers
Posted by: Alejandro | April 9th, 2008 at 11:01 am | Report this commentI dont take the references and plaudits one reads on linkedin at all seriously - they are usually obviously stagemanaged. The self congratulating, sentimental rhetoric of the ‘recommendations’ provoke cynicism more often than not especially when I look at examples where I was actually knew the parties involved - reading of one project managers ethical standards in the knowledge that he was actually a sex offender on parole and reviewing the mutual back scratching of a couple of co-workers, where the one had described the other to me as a w***er who was got rid of as soon as possible - not what they published in LinkedIN!
Posted by: Jeremy Wilde | April 9th, 2008 at 12:43 pm | Report this commentThere will always be the need to connect with each other either online or onlife, but what is important is for an individual or organization to be able to keep at least a degree of business or personal detail out of the searchlight
Posted by: osu akande LONDON | April 10th, 2008 at 12:34 pm | Report this commentUp to about a year ago I avoided these networks because of the potential threat to my privacy. Then a friend encouraged me to join a community of people who were interested in somthing I felt passionate about. Recently I started attending real face to face get togethers. Meeting people who were previously ‘virtual’ friends or associates is great. Social networking is a great way to get familiar before you meet. And indeed it’s a great way of avoiding those who you do not want to connect with.
Posted by: Michael Byrne | April 10th, 2008 at 1:29 pm | Report this commentMany thanks to everyone who has commented. The feedback has helped me formulate my questions for LinkedIn’s Kevin Eyres tomorrow. Shall post my findings next week. Best wishes, Adam
Posted by: Adam Jones | April 10th, 2008 at 6:11 pm | Report this comment[…] is an interesting item by Adam Jones on online networking at his Financial Times Management […]
Posted by: Social Networking « The Inquiring Mind | April 12th, 2008 at 6:28 am | Report this commentI find it useful as a lot of my contacts move around a lot but tend to keep their Lnkedin profiles updated, it is easy to lose contact with peope in today’s mobile world
Posted by: Kevan Hall | April 15th, 2008 at 4:16 pm | Report this comment[…] FT.com | Management Blog | What’s the point of online networking? - It's interesting that people really struggle with these concepts. Isn't the fact you can make connections with others enough? […]
Posted by: My del.icio.us bookmarks for April 17th through April 18th | AccMan | April 19th, 2008 at 11:23 am | Report this commentThis seems to be true for every user of modern technologies. Another thing is, to actually benefit from these technologies, one must be armed with tools on how to benefit from them.
A lot of the technologies are making sure they are compatible with the other, since all Facebook users have a relationship with LinkedIn and vice versa.
Then there’s social.im which allows you send instant messages to online contacts.
At the end of the end, it’s about connectivity and networks!
Thanks for the good piece.
Mutimba
Posted by: Mutimba | April 24th, 2008 at 2:30 pm | Report this comment