Online social networks have become ubiquitous in the past few years. What forms of value do users get from these services and who is most likely to sign up on LinkedIn versus other sites?
Social networks allow users to stay to update with people they have relationships with, allows you to have more “friends”, social interaction, allows you to connect with old friends or those you lost touch with over the years, helps organize events and may make you feel that somebody other then yourself cares about your life. A lot of times social networks have little games you can play to waste your time and the site lets you to send them to your friends so you can waste their time. Some of the value is having all your friends organized in one place and being able to communicate with them easily in that one space. The other value is it can keep us entertained.
LinkedIn is one of the more useful social networking sites because it lets you connect with co-workers and other people that may provide job opportunities or business opportunities. The people most likely to use LinkedIn are people who are looking to make money or want a good business network. The value of LinkedIn is the chance it may present some business opportunity. It also has features that may increase your reputation as a good employee because people can make comments about you and whether they would recommend you. You can also ask people that are experts in their fields questions. I have done this in the past to gain marketing info and it was quite useful for an MBA project.
