It isn’t what you know, it’s who you're "LinkedIn" to....

When I first joined LinkedIn sometime two years ago, I just did it because a friend sent me a link in an email and told me to join. At that time I was growing bored with my membership to Friendster and had just started experimenting with Facebook and still knew very little about social networking sites, let alone understood their value. As probably most folks who sign up for the latest social networking site due to hype or just because you got that email from a friend or colleague, I realize that I do not fully understand and utilize the power of sites like LinkedIn. For those of you who may not know much about LinkedIn, it's basically a professional networking resource. Here are some interesting facts I pulled from one of LinkedIn's press releases that may intrigue you:

• LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, with over 38 million members representing 170 industries and 200 countries and territories.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Ok so I REALLY didn't understand the magnitude of LinkedIn's professional reach until I read this and other articles. Right now, it seems to me that LinkedIn is getting extra hype due to the depressed global economy and all of a sudden my otherwise dormant LinkedIn account is seeing a lot of activity and receiving an increasing number of messages from my connections, especially those searching for new career opportunities. I'm very fortunate to not be looking right now, but it's great to know that LinkedIn provides another avenue to market yourself and make the right connections right now, because you never know when you'll be in need of a new job (especially in today's economy) or just want a career change.

I first thought LinkedIn was just another way to post your resume online but it actually has a lot more applications--I didn't know you could recommend someone, post status updates, join groups, etc. I'm sure i'm just covering the basics so if anyone else wants to chime in---please do!

So how many LinkedIn connections do you have? I had no clue so I just checked and I have 45 and really didn't think much of it but I read that "people with more than twenty connections are 34 times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than 5?" But I would agree that there's definitely a caveat in that "quality trumps quantity."

But now i'm curious--has anyone used LinkedIn to actually make the right connections that eventually led to a job? If so, I am very interested to know your experience so shoot me a post!Although I'm sold on the potential opportunies that LinkedIn can provide, I still wonder if the statistic above really holds true.