This morning I was in receipt of an email from Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linkedin thanking me for being an early member of Linkedin. In fact I was member number 109,756! I cannot remember precisely when I joined Linkedin but it must have been in 2003. I think at the same time I joined Ecademy which was its rival at the time.

Not many people at the time foresaw the influence and rise of these networks - social, business or otherwise. With regards to Linkedin it is unequivocally the pre-eminent networking tool for business. As a recruiter it is a seriously useful tool, and given my network and familiarity as to how to use it  I have successfully exploited its functionality on behalf of clients.

I have learned that the best way to maximise its benefit is not to connect with everybody!  Over 95% of my connections are people who I have met - face to face. (The other 5% mainly consist of what are called 'Lions' - open networkers with a huge number of connections that help me in my searches! By doing this the regular updates that appear on your Home Page have real meaning and when one of my connections connect with someone else it is valuable to  me to see who they are and what they do!

I am sure I will be writing more about Linkedin - and how others can gain maximum benefit from this website.