LinkedIn, You joined yet?

So  LinkedIn  is the newest social media to be on. It's the world's largest professional networking site with over a 135 million members from over 200 countries, and it started in a living room in 2002.
You won't see any of these guys on Facebook posting their pictures of them bring sick inside a taxi.  LinkedIn  is for professionals; directors, managers, people looking for jobs wanting to get to know more people like them to network with.

What is up with this word network?
University drums it into you, lecturers are definitely drumming it into me and lord knows, I do need to know how to network. But, it's a silly word and my class mates and I shiver at the word now.
Net working. NET  WORKING.  N E T  W O R K I N G !!!
However, it works. If you know the term: 'It's not what you know, it's who you know.' Then networking sums that quote into a perfect symmetrical circle. And if we took it one step further and put it onto the internet, then  LinkedIn  is that and 135 million members cannot be wrong.

According to Belbin apparently, I'm good at networking. I have the personality for it. That definitely took me by surprise, yet I do have my glorious moments of being quite sociable. I like knowing what's going on and where. But we get shy in front of new people and I struggle to ask questions so instead I smile and try not to create an awkward silence.

So, anyway, back to  LinkedIn , I've joined it - to help with my networking. I'm doing well on my contacts (thought I've been told it's not a competition); I've joined all the groups I should, following the companies I should and started rambling on to my friends about going on it too. The problem is, I haven't got the courage to post anything into any of the groups.
I have a really good idea too, that if I put a sentence about trying to get companies to encourage more placement students that maybe, just maybe, someone will take me on. Because quite frankly, I have NO idea what I want to do as a placement yet.
I need something unique, interesting and since the last company I applied to rejected me I'm a little stumped.

LinkedIn with their 2 million Company Pages and people signing up faster than two members of staff joining a company every two seconds. It's got to lead somewhere hasn't it?
If you haven't joined yet, why not? There are 14+ million graduates and students joining and if that's on the 'About Us' page on LinkedIn then that's got to mean people are taking into account that students actually have a purpose and we're not always getting drunk somewhere (even when we are).

So LinkedIn, network with people we know, post something, network with people we don't know on the group discussions, get a placement.. Deal. Deal??

Any ideas? Maybe I should just keep blogging about this type of stuff and then I might get a placement.. Well, I can dream, can't I?


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