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Networking sites are becoming increasingly popular. There are the ones for pesonal usage only (such as friendsreunited.com) referred to as social networking sites and those which aim to help develop your professional network referred to as professional networking sites. LinkedIn.com in one of the latter.

I have joined LinkedIn.com about 2 years ago and I was surprised how many people I immediately found on the site that I knew and could connect to. The website aims to be a tool where you can stay in touch with business professionals such as current or past colleagues, suppliers, university friends or customers - basically everybody with whom you have been in touch during your work or university life.

What is the point of that? Well, you know how easy it is to lose contact with old colleagues, but at some point, these contacts could come in very handy. What about that old colleague who had such amazing skills on a topic you now really need advice on? Or the old colleague who is working in the company you would love to land a job with? As business professionals, we far too often try to do it all on our own, but we all know people that can help us at some point and it is important not to forget this! And we could help them as well!

Well, LinkedIn.com tries to make just that a bit easier. After registration you list all the companies you worked in. Then you can review a list of all the members that worked in the same companies. If you recognise someone, you ask them to connect with you. If they accept your request, you are first contacts and can get in touch with each other. You can do the same with your old university friends and you can search as well for names of people you remember and want to find out if they are on the network. Your network consists of people you ar connected with, your contacts are connected with and they in turn are connected with as well. So your network consists of 3 levels. Of course you can also invite people that are not yet on LinkedIn.

So, what happens next? Your network grows continuously. You find more old and trusted friends and colleagues. They find other friends and colleagues and they do the same as well. You have immediate access to review profiles form connections 3 levels away. There is a downside however: You only can contact your immediate contacts. To contact their contacts and their contacts contacts, you need to ask your contact to introduce you or pay for your otherwise free membership. But it is easier than it sounds!

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