LinkedIn and Plaxo…
Today I thought I’d write about a couple of social networking sites; LinkedIn and Plaxo. I have accounts at both of them and use them both. One of the things about social networking sites is that there are so many of them. Different friends use different sites and so you end up having accounts on several. I guess that’s part of the purpose of them. So, let’s talk a little about them both.
My favorite social networking site without a doubt is LinkedIn. It’s very much a professional site though and doesn’t try to be anything else. The objective of the site is keep everything about your work history past and present in one place and enable you to keep in contact with colleagues you previously worked with. LinkedIn lets you connect directly with people with up to 2 degrees of separation (in my case currently about 15,000 people outside of the 145 people I’m directly connected with). You can connect with other people, via an introduction with a 3rd degree of separation, in my case some 1.3M people. I guess that’s a lot more people than I’ll ever know in my life. The total LinkedIn network stands at over 25M people. Pretty impressive.
You can choose to use LinkedIn for free (which I do) or there’s a premium model available if you want to use the network for marketing or advertising your presence. It’s always good to check up periodically on what old colleagues are doing and it’s a lot less intrusive than sending them an unsolicited email.
Towards the other end of the scale is Plaxo which tries to hold a middle ground between professional and casual social network. Plaxo does all the work stuff (but not so well in my opinion) but also adds a calendar, people’s birthdays, maps to where they live or work, photo uploads and a few other features besides. There’s no way to tell just how many people are on the network and you can’t connect to anyone who’s a friend of a friend or a friend. It’s actually a little more difficult to manage your connections in general on Plaxo than on LinkedIn.
You can categorize connections on Plaxo as either Business, Friend or both and this lets you make available whatever information about you you want them to see. That’s a pretty good feature as you can let individuals have your home address and email if you want to, rather than just your work contact information.
But, like I said at the beginning of the article the real problem with these social networks is that no one of them owns the majority of the marketplace and so you end up having to join several. I have different friends and colleagues on LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, FriendsReunited and Hi5. I’m sure if I joined some others I could even round out my experience!
Still the whole experience is a whole lot easier than it was in the old days to keep in touch with people. No more writing a letter once every few months and waiting for a reply. No more need to send an email every few months either. Not even a need to have these people on instant messenger (unless you speak to them every day). Socializing with your friends and colleagues who don’t live in your hometown is now as easy as getting an online account and either just watching their lives change from a distance or participating in it to whatever degree you feel comfortable. Just remember though. In the same way that you can watch other people, other people can watch you. Be careful what you share with the world. Your boss may be reading your blog!
July 27th, 2008 at 6:32 am
When you peel the onion back further there are even bigger differences and similarities and they are significant.
Major Differences:
LinkedIn limits how many people that you can invite (3,000 lifetime), Plaxo does not.
Plaxo limits how many people you can connect to (1,000, a small number) and LinkedIn does not.
LinkedIn has advanced searching capabilities and Plaxo does not.
LinkedIn lets you see very well the “layering of your network (1,2,3) and Plaxo does not.
Plaxo has more “social” features like pictures, favorites, etc. that LinkedIn avoids entirely.
You can get training on LinkedIn (for example by us) and you can’t get training on Plaxo.
Similarities:
Both are based are in the Bay Area and have former employees from the other company working for them.
Both are rather unfriendly to their users, especially their largest users and that is an understatement.
Plaxo is now owned by Company and LinkedIn will probably be owned by someone else soon, perhaps Microsoft (personal, yet professional, opinion).
Both have had significant IT issues, especially with capacity.
Both hide their limitations from their users so they mus discover the limitations and rules on by violating or exceeding them for the most part.
KEY POINT – Both have large audiences of important people
That last point reiterates the reason to be on both, for future reasons if nothing else. There are similar reasons for someone to be on MySpace, Facebook, eCademy and some of the others. One day, there will be a unified user interface that will provide a simple and universal front end to all of these.
Mike O’Neil
CEO, LinkedIn Trainer, LinkedIn Expert
Integrated Alliances
March 15th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Very interesting and worth the read.