Social Networking Showdown

Social networking for personal, career, and business reasons became the Killer App for 2007 and keeps on growing. LinkedIn, the number-one business networking site (15+ million active users and 4 million visitors each month) is widely recognized by serious job seekers and entrepreneurs as a valuable source of network contacts, referrals, and business and job leads.
With the ability to post a resume or bio online, as well as recommendations, many job seekers have found their LinkedIn profile increases their digital presence and credibility. Even passive candidates (those employed and theoretically not looking for a new job) can be “sourced” for interviews by recruiters and potential employers.

While LinkedIn has an established “business/career” benefit, Facebook and MySpace were introduced as more “personal” social networks. And their numbers reflect that: Facebook has 30 million active users and 17 million visitors each month, while the behemoth MySpace has 110 million active users and 61 million visitors each month. Clearly, these two dwarf LinkedIn in size.
However, here’s an interesting fact: Facebook has the fastest-growing demographic in the 25+ age group. This may be due in part to the popularity of social networking for personal reasons and its transition into older groups who have seen Facebook’s widespread use among teen-agers. But there is also a trend among the 25+ age group to expand Facebook’s use for career and even business purposes.
Will there be a final showdown of the top three social networking sites? Or will they happily co-exist? Certainly each site has evangelists and die-hard proponents. However, there are folks who will have profiles on more than one of these social-networking sites.
Why? Perhaps to maximize networking visibility for a job search, professional services, or business products – that comes readily to mind. But what about simply “joining in the conversation” on each distinctive community and/or creating your own “niche” communities to connect? Are you on more than one of these sites? What are your reasons?
By the way, here is my LinkedIn profile.
By Susan Guarneri and courtesy of CareerHub.com. The Career Hub blog connects job seekers with experts in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.

Originally posted by sarah ennenga