As far as social networking sites go, I see LinkedIn as the professional hub of that universe. It may not end up being a part of your daily online life, but it should definitely serve as the constant foundation for anything business related you do online.
Think of it this way,
you may not be looking for a new job, or beating prospective clients' doors down, but in this day and age of due diligence you can bet you're being checked out. Especially in the security industry where it pays to make sure you know exactly who you are talking to in any professional exchange.
Listing details about yourself and your professional history are definitely the sore spots most security professionals have in using something like LinkedIn. We've been living under the view that we should keep information like that close to the chest, and reveal it only when necessary.
Yes, it's true, there is a certain vulnerability you expose by listing your professional history - but it's nothing you can't mitigate by carefully thinking through the extent of information you release and the context you put it in.
Overall, this contributes to my view that social networking can make the workplace and professional relationships more honest and transparent. This is beneficial to the reputable, honest professionals and an obstacle to the rest.
LinkedIn is set up like Facebook in a lot of ways - in fact - you can think of it as the Facebook of business. You enter information about yourself, and get linked to others you know or associate with. You have a home view that lets you see what all your contacts are up to, and you can interact through "Q&A", status messages, groups and other tools.
Getting started, you can post as much or as little information as you'd like to your profile. It's always a good idea (with any social networking site) to look around and get ideas from people you trust before you set up your profile completely (I probably should have mentioned that when I was talking about Facebook and Twitter).
Basically, your profile should be a thumbnail of your professional life. Someone reading your profile should be able to know about your experience, education and professional career. Some people post full-on resumes as profiles, not that I recommend that but I do suggest a brief overview.
LinkedIn gives you granular control of what you want listed on your profile, or how much information the general public can see on your "public profile".
Your "public profile" is what's visible to non-LinkedIn users or people outside your network. The way they figure out your network is anyone within 2 degrees of your contacts (a friend of a friend). To me, that's a good way to handle the basic privacy issues because it filters out people totally unrelated but still allows for some freedom in finding people you may not be directly associated with.
Also like Facebook, LinkedIn uses groups to help people with similar interests and professional fields communicate and collaborate. For instance, I belong to the ASIS International Group which has over 2,319 members. Through that group, members can ask and answer questions, post news stories (or blog posts) and even post and find jobs.
But unlike Facebook, LinkedIn gives you business related tools such as the ability to write a professional reference for someone or other members can write one for you. Some people use these like crazy and others rarely do - but the standard adage applies - you get what you receive (if you want recommendations, write them for other people). You can choose to display your references on your profile or not - even list the ones you write or not.
I use LinkedIn as my standard professional networking platform, not with almost daily interactions like Twitter or even weekly like Facebook. Although I could update my LinkedIn status along with the other two - I choose not to. Not that I have any specific reason, but I just don't see LinkedIn in that light for my own personal interactions with the service. I do look people up in LinkedIn after I meet them in conferences or other professional functions and ask them to join my network. And when I run into a situation where it would be helpful to talk to people from a specific industry, field or company it helps to look through your LinkedIn contacts.
There have been some valuable connections I've make through LinkedIn, but I'll be the first to admit I don't use all of it's tools. I think that it's the kind of thing that you should definitely join and set up for sustained use, then see where it takes you. One thing I recommend when you're setting your profile up is to use a picture. It used to be a little narcissistic to put a face shot on your resume, but that thinking is long gone. In fact, most serious job hunters have an online resume posted somewhere that's available to recruiters and LinkedIn works even better than that.
Most social and networking sites give you a way to easily direct people to your page/profile/account on their service. I didn't list this under Facebook or Twitter even though you can (click them to go there) - but I do talk about it for LinkedIn because it's a great idea to put this "badge" on your blog or website. It gives professional contacts a way to find out more about you and connect with you in more ways than they may originally think.
I've been looking into the best way for us all to share social network info with each other, and have the ability for everyone to update their own listings without resorting to a specific industry website. I checked out the groups in LinkedIn - but they don't have a very usable way for group members to add themselves to a list with categories for the different social networking accounts. Facebook has more enhanced group options but since some people would rather not use Facebook for professional networking that's out. This may end up being an open spreadsheet that I'd give members access to. If anyone has any ideas - let me know!
Here are some security professionals who use LinkedIn. There are many many more, but I only contacted specific people that I know use social networking. If you want to be added - let me know. Like I said above - soon I hope to have a more complete social networking matrix.
