LinkedIn is actually pretty neat

After posting on the big “oops did we forget to renew our domain?” scandal over at LinkedIn, I finally decided to register. I first visited several months ago after reading about the site in either Fast Company or Inc., but failed to register because I have daddy issues and need a nightlight to get to sleep. I must say I’m impressed.

The user interface is clean and intuitive. The pages are repsonsive, so much so that Friendster seems even more slow. It’s nearly like using TypePad in terms of speed, but due to the nature of the site, the backend is doing a lot more work.

If you are out of the loop, LinkedIn is one of the popular “Social Software” [see Weblogs Inc.’s site on the subject] sites that aim to hook you up with other people you’d like. While Friendster is now all about getting casual sex with other likeminded hoodlums, LinkedIn is all about the professional. It’s “Friendster for rich people” you might say. Excellent.

Once you join and get a few of your friends to join, it starts getting powerful. All social software sites work off the “6 degrees” theory that is turning out to be true. If you sign up and add all your contacts, including me, I then have more credibility to your contacts than a 2001-esque cold-call.

So do me a favor and add me to your network (just search for “Jon Gales” or the email me AT jongales dot com). I’ll do the same. We’ll all have better networks because of it.