Linked In

After watching the 2 minute introduction video, I thought Linked In sounded like a great idea- a social networking site just for business and career networking. I signed up for an account and entered my work and education information. Then, I began looking for people I know and exploring individual profiles. I noticed that you can only see abbreviated parts of a person's account if he or she is not in your contacts. Also, I got a message on one person's profile that said I had to pay for premium Linked In service to obtain their full profile. I'm not a big fan of charging people for access to such information. If someone is trying to find a job by networking and checking job listings on Linked In, it doesn't seem fair to charge fees. Someone who needs access to the information the most won't be able to pay for it. It seems a bit elitist, in my opinion.

I browsed the job postings by searching under "librarian", "library", "publishing", "books", and "pets". When I clicked for details on one of the pet listings, I received a message that said "This company is not in your contacts. You cannot view job descriptions from this company until you have a contact there." I don't particularly care for this aspect of Linked In either. What if someone wants to start a completely new career- something for which they have no experience or schooling. How does one get contacts in this situation?

I added one of my colleagues to my contact list. I browsed profiles by organization, as well. When I did a search for "Frisco Public Library", I just got a list of people who worked there or work there currently. There was no information about the library itself. Perhaps I was not searching correctly, so I will try it with some other companies to see what happens. I think the interface is a bit bland. As I said before, I really like the idea of a professional networking site where you don't have to find out that one of your contacts just went to the bathroom or that he just purchased a penguin for his virtual zoo. I hope that upon further exploration, I will find Linked In to be the type of site I expected. However, at this time, I am finding it to be somewhat bland, abbreviated, and elitist.