Simon Willison’s Weblog

Professional social software

Via D. Keith Robinson, LinkedIn is a social software system that works kind of like Friendster but is targetted at professionals. You sign up, create a profile that includes your industry and geographical area and it provides you with a number of tools to find other people with similar interests. More importantly, it lets you build up a network of contacts through which you can access other people. If nothing else, it’s a great way of maintaining your CV.

Keith says he’s had a few leads for freelance work from it so it appears to work. I’ve created an account; if you sign up, drop me an invite (my email address can be found via my contact page) and provided I have at least a vague inkling of who you are I’ll add you to my immediate network.

Incidentally, the most connected member is currently one Joi Ito with 493 connections. I’m guessing LinkedIn follows power laws just as much as the rest of the web does.