I am always skeptical of social networking sites because of their MySpace-ish teen appeal and overblown value.  They remind me of thick “Questionnaire” notebooks girls used to make in middle school with colorful (and gaudy) drawings and questions like “Favorite food” and “Who do you like most from class?“.  If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, you should have went to middle school in Eastern Europe.  The point I’m trying to make is so what you have 500 friends on MySpace.

However, that all changed for me when as couple of friends with really good jobs added me to their LinkedIn network.  Now I have access to several hundred high-class friends-of-friends whom I can literally email and say “hey, I know so and so, so we are practically family“.  Not really, but you get the point.

It’s very simple – register on LinkedIn.com and point to a couple of people you know are already registered on LinkedIn.com.  You now have access to their networks.

On top of that, there are a few features I found nifty, such as

• New job notifications
• Job research
• Recommendations

As you can imagine, it doesn’t hurt to try – you’ll be building your own little grapevine.  Just an extra edge if you are looking for a career path or advancement.