Jason Alba wrote an interesting post on “I’m On LinkedIn - Now What???” regarding his approach to ‘friend’ request on LinkedIn. I am not sure how ethical his approach is although I can see where he is coming from and why.

There are many social sites around and from the moment you join you start to receive ‘friend’ requests. It is a little like a pyramid scheme. You join and add a couple of individuals to your ‘friends’ list. Some else joins and adds you to their list and while they are at it, add your firends as well. LinkedIn is no different.

Jason’s approach is quite simple and fairly obvious as well. If you want to be my friend, do so on the understanding that everyone on my ‘friends’ list will receive my monthly newsletter. Sounds a little like bribery, or blackmail. I don’t know how LinkedIn looks at this type of activity.

I think the point that is made to back up this requirement is very valid. If you have 100 or more ‘friends’, how often do you really interact with them. Many of these ‘friends’ add themselves and then you never hear from them again. With LinkedIn you can get away with a requirement like this so you know the people you do add will get some value from the ‘friendship’. You are interacting with them, even if it is by newsletter.

A larger benefit is that you wont get 100’s of friend requests. People will think twice before requesting to become a ‘friend’. Whilst I applaud the novelty of using this tactic to combat irrelevant friend requests, I hope it doesn’t become commonplace. I certainly don’t want to receive 100 newsletters each month, one from each of my ‘friends’ on LinkedIn.

Yahoo announced yesterday a deeper commitment to social networking. Yahoo has joined Google’s OpenSocial initiative, whose purpose is to have developers come up with innovative new applications for the most popular social networking websites.

To make the web more relevant for users, OpenSocial is encouraging apps that not only work on many different social networking sites, but also connect them.

“Yahoo believes in community-driven industry specifications and expects OpenSocial to fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms at Yahoo.

MySpace and Orkut are already providing providing OpenSocial applications. Hi5 will begin doing so in a few days. With Yahoo on board, even more users and developers will be participating.

Yahoo, MySpace, and Google are also partnering in a non-profit foundation “to foster the continued open development of OpenSocial,” according to Dan Peterson, Google Product Manager.

The big players in OpenSocial:

• Engage.com
• Friendster
• Google
• hi5
• Hyves
• Imeem
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Ning
• Oracle
• orkut
• Plaxo
• Salesforce.com
• Six Apart
• TianjiViadeo
• XING
• Yahoo

Pretty much a “Who’s Who” of social networking … with the exception of Facebook. They seem to be the big holdout.

LinkedIn Status is a pretty simple idea. It’s a feature that allows you to inject more personality into your profile, and it’s been available on other social networking platforms for a long time. But this is a noteworthy upgrade, because LinkedIn is such a widely-used tool.

It’s a relationship thing. LinkedIn wants to make it easy to see at a glance what your network is doing. The more frequently you update your LinkedIn Status, the more attention you are obviously paying to networking, and the more social networking - worthy you become.

And what do you say in your updates? What is important to your network? What questions do they ask? What news and blogs do they read? when you update your Status, focus on these thoughts and others that provide value to your connections, and your LinkedIn network will get stickier.

It’s simple. Go to your LinkedIn profile. You’ll see a link to enter your status, under your name. Chris Richman, Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn, has made a YouTube video describing how to use LinkedIn Status & other social networking features. To watch, click here:

LinkedIn Status Video

The aspect of LinkedIn with the greatest leverage is the ability to connect quickly (and sometimes emotionally) with powerful centers of influence whom you’ve never met. A strong social networking connection with the right person could change your life forever … maybe a lot of lives.

Bill Gates has asked a question at LinkedIn:

“How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?”

Wouldn’t it be worth your while - and fun, too! - to plan a continuing strategy of connecting with the movers and shakers in your field? Forum communities offer a lot of opportunities. Every social networking platform has its “big dogs.” How might it affect your future if your thoughtful contribution at LinkedIn Answers captured the imagination of one of the top people in your field?

It happens every day. Someone makes a quantum leap because they suddenly connected to someone who is REALLY connected. And as you make those efforts at LinkedIn and at forum communities or other social networking hotspots, you will get better and better at the strategy. As you read the responses of others who use the same strategy, you’ll get more of an idea of how to focus your response to strengthen your contribution.

Do you think Bill Gates will read these answers at LinkedIn? I’ll bet he does. Do you think a ton of other well-connected people will participate and also read these answers? I’ll bet they do. So here is just one of many social networking chances you have to leap-frog your competition. Answer Bill Gates’ LinkedIn question and REALLY nail it!

Answer Bill Gates’ Question

LinkedIn helps solve a big problem. Most of us have companies to promote and products to promote, and that’s what we do. But more and more, people are seeing that companies and products come and go. Not knowing the future, your best long-term strategy is to take charge of your future. Effectively promote yourself whenever you have the chance.

Some productive ways to use LinkedIn:

1. Create a professional LinkedIn resume to put you in position for new career opportunities you would never have found otherwise. Your LinkedIn profile is a social networking tool that can prospect for you while you work and while you sleep. Every minute of every day, your face and credentials and achievements and testimonials are there for others to see.

2. Get a streamlined evaluation of prospects for your projects. A LinkedIn profile gives you a quick idea of the person’s background, profession, current job, work history, connections, entrepreneurial inclinations, and so forth.

3. Use LinkedIn as a constantly self-updating social networking Rolodex. Not only can you keep track of all your connections, but they certainly keep their own contact information current. If you have a lot of contacts, your own files no doubt are out of date. LinkedIn can solve a big part of that problem.

4. Seek out past employers, co-workers and other close contacts for a digital recommendation letter. (For some contacts, it’s best to write your own letter and send it to them for approval. Obviously, keep the superlatives realistic.)

5. Harness the enormous potential value in “LinkedIn Answers.” You can get response from some of the top entrepreneurs and professionals in your field on any question. They are on LinkedIn to build their network & credibility, so they have reason to give you their best answers. This is way different from asking a question on some forum where you don’t have a clue who the person is that’s answering, or their experience or credentials.

Other social networking sites come and go, but LinkedIn is a rock where serious professionals actively network. Use your LinkedIn profile as part of your long-term plan for social marketing.

“Googling” is everywhere. We’ve all heard of employees getting fired - or applicants not hired - because of their Facebook or MySpace profile. And when you search for a potential employer, you might find a list of lawsuits, complaints and “IHateAcme.com” websites. Or you might find a list of company press releases. Either way, there’s a good chance what you find will influence your impression.

To monitor that “you” brand:

1. Set up Google Alerts for your name
2. Check Technorati regularly for your name in blogs
3. Check Google Video for your name in videos

How can you help make sure that your “YOU” brand shows up positively & accurately?

Don’t reveal everything to the world in your social networking profiles or on your blogs. Think what you would want to find in the social media if you were hiring “you”. Then create a professional profile to match for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.

Register “yourname.com”, if it’s available. If not, get the .net domain or .org or one of the others. Set up a blog, if you don’t have one, with this domain name. Anyone who links will probably use your name for anchor text. Your blog can link to your Facebook profile, or YouTube video, or Flickr photos, etc. You can write up a bio for your “About me” page & link to a resume.

Link from your blog to your articles posted online, and to the positive pages created about you. Be sure to go to Digg & StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites to bookmark these pages.

Whenever you put something online, remind yourself: “This is eternal.” Because it pretty much is.

You don’t need to do all this reputation management today. But long-range, this plan will strengthen that brand of “YOU.”

Remember when all the Internet companies went IPO crazy, and the stock market knew no bounds as they lavished affection on said companies? Then the bubble burst, former Wall Street darlings were now paupers, and the stock market spiraled out of control.

Why do I feel like we may be heading that way again?

Yesterday I mentioned that Facebook is now valued at $15 billion. Why it’s value is that high is anyone’s guess, but I think it has gotten to a point where people go “Oh, well they say it’s worth that much so it must be.”

According to Mashable, LinkedIn is pondering an IPO. They’re in a different position though with the fact they actually sell subscriptions for the bigger levels of service and don’t rely solely on advertising.

Still, all this talk of valuations and IPOs tends to make someone who watched the first tech bubble burst be just a tad bit nervous for fear we’re heading that way again. These sites to be mare valuable to your daily life this time around, it would be a shame to lose them.

I’ve been concentrating on how MySpace works best for promoting your business, but what about promoting yourself? The head of a company is the face of their company, and having your own online reputation can be as vital as your businesses.

Great for connecting with old colleagues, employers, and friends from all of your schooling, it’s easy to quickly build up your “network” on LinkedIn. And unlike the other social networks, this one focuses more on the business aspects of true “networking”. They also have promised to keep the site free of those annoying things we run in to on the other sites.

My favorite thing has to be the ability to give and receive recommendations. Had a good working experience with someone that can vouch for you? Let them give you a recommendation you can show off to the world. In return, you do the same for them, both of you building a reputation on a network that can lead to more work, or finding new vendors and suppliers.

It never hurts to take a few minutes to try and promote yourself along the way.

The New York Times has an interview today with Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn, that is music to most people’s ears.

Yes, he’s rushing to copy the electronic underpinnings of Facebook’s elegant application programming interface, or A.P.I., that allows outside developers to weave their own programs into its site. But because his site is aimed at professionals seeking to network, he wants to keep these add-ons all business, unlike the unrestrained goofiness on Facebook, where programs let you turn your friends into vampires, draw graffiti on their pages, and challenge them to stimulating news quizzes.

Thank goodness. Facebook really damaged their reputation, I feel, with the never-ending silliness of their applications. LinkedIn is about professionalism, so I am glad they plan to keep the brand untainted, as it were.

So LinkedIn will have to approve any company that wants to tap into its system. Mr. Nye says he is looking for two kinds of applications. First, there are deals that enable LinkedIn members to tap into their connections in other places, for example, while using applications like Salesforce.com. Second, some applications will be allowed to add features to LinkedIn’s own site. Mr. Nye offered, as an example, a module connected to a trade show or conference that integrated travel planning and other features.

I am thrilled with this. As I wrote last week, I’ve felt Facebook was diluting their brand, LinkedIn should keep their site as pure as possible, and it sounds like they are on the right track to do just that.

Everyone should really check out this article to see where the business site is heading, and what it holds for all of us and our online reputations.

Another LinkedIn item of interest:

(Source) This Friday, professional social network LinkedIn will provide the ability to add a photo to your profile page. It’s clearly a move that aims to keep up with Facebook, which increasingly looks set to steal LinkedIn’s audience.

I don’t know that we should set this up as a competition between Facebook and LinkedIn, though. Studies have shown that networkers who include photos in their profiles, no matter which social network they are a part of, do better overall than networkers who don’t. That is, they get more friends requests, join more groups, and get more of their own requests answered. People like to see who they’re networked with. That’s just human nature.

That isn’t to say there aren’t good reasons for not having a photo. Maybe you value your privacy. I know I certainly do. But when it comes to networking and growing a business through your social networks, it pays to include a photo. I think the folks at LinkedIn realize that and are ready to give that benefit to their users. At any rate, I think it’s a good move.

Care to get linked in to Jessica Biel? Well, now you can.

The star has set up a LinkedIn profile, a very popular social networking site for business leaders. I like LinkedIn. Here’s why:

As opposed to other social sites, LinkedIn tends to skew to a wealthier demographic, with executives from all 500 of the Fortune 500, an average annual household income of approximately $139,000, and more than 1,500 C-level business leaders.

If this is the segment of the market that you target your services to then you’d likely benefit from a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a lot better for traditional businesses and Web 2.0 businesses that follow the traditional model than either Facebook or MySpace, which tend to work better for high school and college students, musicians and other creative types, and the lower to middle socioeconomic classes.

It’s not that you can’t make business work at MySpace and Facebook. You can. But you have to know your market and if the market is right for you to be there then you should be. I like LinkedIn because the market there is right for me.