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There are three types of relationships:

• Personal – These are your friends (golf buddies, neighbors, parents at kid’s school, etc.); they like your warts and all and you choose them, making them rather safe.
• Functional – These are people you work with to perform your job or realm of responsibilities.  You build relationships with them, often because you have to (colleagues, customers, suppliers, etc.). You don’t necessarily choose all of them, but because of the context of your relationship, likewise they feel fairly safe.

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LinkedIn® announced its fourth and largest round of funding to date - $53 million which values the company at $1 billion, largely based on a rapid addition of users, expansion of their business lines and perceived future opportunities.  You certainly can’t argue with their success in creating unparalleled market buzz and in the process attracting marquee investors such as Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Greylock Partners.

LinkedIn’s current revenue sources include advertising, premium subscriptions, job listings and a corporate hiring service.  They’ve also hinted at launching “new lines of businesses.” 

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Have you ever heard of the company Threadless? They’re the classic case of applying key principals in my upcoming book: Relationship Economics (Wiley, 2008).  When it comes to building business relationships, Threadless is the epitome of the intentional, strategic, and thus quantifiable value of social networks.  Forget LinkedIn® for handshakes and introductions - this is Adaptive Innovation™ at work!

Threadless manages to solve business problems by consistently producing highly creative, profitable products month after month with no advertising, no professional designers, no sales force, and no retail distribution. They have been able to dramatically rethink and reposition their long-term relationship with their customers by blurring the line between producers and consumers.

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You won’t believe this one. I recently logged into LinkedIn and it actually gave me the following alert: LinkedIn is currently unavailable while we make upgrades. What?! Hello?! I was simply distraught. I was in Dubai, preparing for a meeting with a senior vice president with whom I had scheduled the meeting through LinkedIn, and I desperately needed access to his profile. What now – I can’t show up blindly!

As technologies such as e-mail and the use of Blackberry devises has become so prevalent in our lives, any disruption to that comfort zone is met with a sense of panic. Most of us cannot imagine going through the day without e-mailing or texting someone, 4CLO (for crying out loud). This begs the question, How mission critical is your social network? What critical piece of information instrumental to your personal and professional success would you need just in time, so that if the social link or connection were disrupted, it would cause irreparable damage?
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From the LinkedIn® Best Practices Booklet by David Nour

How can I keep people in my network from seeing who my connections are?

By default, LinkedIn users can see and browse the connections of the people in their network. To hide your connections from the people in your network:

• Click the “Account & Settings” link at the top of the page; as a security measure, you may be asked for your user id & password again

• Under “Settings,” find “Privacy Settings” and click “Connections Browse.” 

• Under “Connections Browse,” select “No.”

• Click “Update Information” at the bottom of the page.

In January 2007, Guy Kawasaki wrote about “The 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn” on his blog. In it, he described how most people use LinkedIn to “get to someone” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. At the time, the online network included an estimated 8 ½ million experienced professionals from 130 industries. (By the way, today LinkedIn is approaching 17 million users in 170 industries.)

It is interesting that his Top 10 list to increase the value of LinkedIn holds true a year later. As a recap, here are Guy’s Top 10 (with a few updated additions):

1. Increase your visibility.
2. Improve your connectability.
3. Improve your Google PageRank.
4. Enhance your search engine results.
5. Perform blind and “reverse” company reference checks.
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search.
7. Make your interview go smoother.
8. Gage the health of a company.
9. Gage the health of an industry.
10. Track start-ups.
11. Ask for advice.
12. Integrate into a new job.
13. Scope out the competition, customers and partners.

Here is our Top 10 list for 2008 (well, Top 14):

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