Running Head: PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL NETWORKING

Professional Social Networking

Philip Hughes, Shawn Cornillot, Abdulrahman Abaalkhail, Kassandra
Wright, Chi Nguyen, Peter Hwang, Clement Liao
Temple University

Social networks have been playing a crucial part in our daily activities nowadays.

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According to Craig Smith, reporter for Digital Marketing Ramblings, approximately 1.26 billion
people use Facebook alone. These online populations continue to increase as social media sites
such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn consume more and more generations. Taking advantage
of this widespread phenomenon, social networks are utilized by HR professionals to find
potential employees and vice versa. These professional social networks have become an
important part of the recruiting process and while having many benefits, they can bring various
drawbacks as well.
First of all, what is a social network? According to Dictionary.com, it is a network of
friends, colleagues, and other personal contacts and an online community of people with a
common interest who use a Web site or other technologies to communicate with each other and
share information resources. It provides a media platform for users to keep in touch with friends
or colleagues that they might not be able to do on a personal level due to distance, time conflict,
or for inconvenience. As a result, social networks have progressed into being a major part of
most American lives. It started with BBS and CompuServe, the earliest social networking
systems. The BBS, or Bulletin Board System, was one of the first social networking services.
BBS was an online meeting system where users could download games and files, as well as
messages other users. CompuServe was the next big social networking site. Similarly to BBS, it
allowed people to share files, and was the first thing to make emailing available to the general
public. There were also vast forums that paved the way for how forums are set up today.
While BBS and CompuServe formed the way forums are set up, modern social
networking started with Friendster. Friendster showed connections between people, and how the
users might know each other through the friends they had. Myspace was also another site
introduced in 2003 and was very popular amongst teenagers for several years. However, as time

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went on many people moved to Facebook, the predominant social networking site today.
There are many more social networking sites today than ever before. This also creates
more competition as everyone wants their own slice of the pie. For example, blogs are sites that
people set up to provide information and opinions about events, ideas or anything else they want
to discuss. Twitter is considered a micro blog due to the fact that blog entries or tweets can
only be 140 characters or less. Twitter allows for one to follow Twitter accounts to interact and
keep updated. YouTube is considered a social network site, however, it is video based while most
social network sites are text and picture based. An example of a picture based social network is
Instagram. According to their website, Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with
friends through a series of pictures.
All the listed social network sites are used for personal and casual reason. However, some social
network sites are intended for helping people build careers and business communities.
Professional networking services have had a brief but important history. Although they have only
been around for a short amount of time, their impact in the professional world has been huge.
Today it makes communication easy and is crucial for businesses. The idea of professional
networking has been around for a couple of decades. In 1981 Mike Bloomberg founded
Bloomberg LP, an idea that allowed businesses and their clients to communicate and receive
immediate feedback. It allowed anyone in the system to communicate easier. Today this site is
still being used by big time companies in the business world. The next professional networking
service that had an impact was the website sixdegrres.com. It came out in the 1990s before sites
such as Facebook and Myspace existed. "The site sought to link individuals through friendship
and business relationships to show connections within a larger community, via levels of degrees.
When you logged in, a series of network clouds would appear on the home page, illustrating how

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many people were in your first degree (you were limited to 10), then the second degree, all the
way to the large cloud of the sixth" (Bloomberg 2007). This site was created before social
networking became well-established, but provided a basis for future professional networking
websites.
Nowadays, the most popular business oriented social network site is LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows
business professionals to keep in touch and network in more of a professional setting than
Facebook. Even though they share similar features, LinkedIn is highly recommended in order in
advance in a career through social networking.
LinkedIn was founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003. The website is mainly
used for professional networking and has shown major success. With over 225 million registered
users, it is one of the prominent social networking websites today. When it was created its
owners differentiated itself from other social networks by focusing on "those who were into
professional development and looking for a new way of doing business"(Yeung 2013). The
company was established in a time when there was skepticism with the internet, but fortunately
had success. They began to gain thousands of new members within a few months. After two
years they had over 1 million members. They were making their money by listing job offers and
advertising. Over the years the company has become highly profitable and shows the success that
these professional networking services can have in current times. The site is now available in 20
languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish,
Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog.
As of 2 July 2013, Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 65.6 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and
178.4 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent
from a year earlier and surpassing Myspace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in

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January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".
There are many advantages to having a professional social networking page. First of all, you can
hand out your resume worldwide. By making a profile, you allow other potential employers to
see if you have the desirable traits that they need for their business. Not only can you show your
rsum, you can also access big or small companies on an international scale. With sites such as
LinkedIn, you can also receive recommendations from your other employers and fellow
employees to back you up as an individual, thus giving you credibility with potential customers
and future employers.
Professional social networking sites also have the potential of moving people higher up in their
industry or by having them change their careers. Being able to connect with future employers
and linking with businessmen of your own industry opens up many new paths for your future.
According to Nina Churchill, Social Media Strategist, Linked in is necessary to ones
professional future to create connections with other professionals, attract potential partner,
clients, and employers, and develop supportive dialogues with professionals in ones field.
Networking is a foundation of professionalism. You may find an unexpected connection that
can help you accelerate your career or that could be a potential client (Churchill, 2013).
Building connections on LinkedIn can be used to stay aware of networking events going on in
your area.
Many resume critics will reiterate that a resume is a living document. Having all of your
professional information up to date on LinkedIn is a great way to promote yourself (Churchill,
2013). LinkedIn makes your resume easily accessible and editable. This advantage generates
even greater opportunity for beneficial, professional relationships to be built. LinkedIn gives the
ability to post job listings (Churchill, 2013) as well as the option to receive alerts for

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recommended jobs. These connections as well as peer connections will only insure greater
success.
In the professional business world, social networking is very important. Its becoming the new
way of displaying yourself to other professionals. Instead of looking at the resumes handed to
them, employers are starting to do the job of navigating and looking for the most suitable
candidates to hire via social networking. Thus, online presence is necessary these days especially
in the business world.
Princeton Universitys Career Services wrote an article called Social Media & Your Future
which explained briefly how to make the best out of social media and steps you should follow
to create and maintain a positive, professional online presence(Social media and,). Some of
these tips included googling your name and clearing up negative information that would
damage your reputation (Social media and,), locking your private social media profiles such as
Facebook, and evaluating your actions and the information you share in your profiles.
Another great benefit to professional social networking websites is that by having a profile, you
can conduct research on other companies or businesses. If there is a potential company that you
want to market products or services to, professional social networking sites are the way to go.
Conducting research through these professional social networking websites cost no fees, thus
saving you money in the long run.
Professional social networks like LinkedIn is one of the most important social networking
websites, it is the most effective social networking website so far. It builds a bridge between
employers, employees and other professionals and opens up a lot of opportunities. Having an
impressive profile and a positive presence and persona is essential in this social networking
website. Princeton University also provided us with great tips on how to successfully and

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effectively use this website. First off, having a good professional headshot with a professional
attire is very important because its the only physical image youll represent to whoevers
viewing you. Also, be sure to leave a personal message to every connection you add on
LinkedIn. Most importantly, make sure to update your profile often with materials related to your
career and profession, and make sure not to share any unnecessary personal information that
could be unprofessional.
However, as great as these websites may be, there are some drawbacks to having an established
professional social profile. It can create disadvantages for both the company and the hopeful
employee. According to the Society of Human Resource Management social media marketing
opens people up to become vulnerable to hackers, viruses, and fraud. These major problems
often lead to legal action along with time and money spent.
Firstly, privacy can pose a drawback for not only LinkedIn but also social media in general.
Facebook, for example, has always had many issues with privacy and keeping the users
information safe. Even though there are privacy settings that prevent other users to view a
profile, ones information is still being shared with a third party for many reasons one being
direct marketing. Facebook also doesn't check or verify that the profiles being designed are
accurate. Kids under the required age to sign up are lying about when their birthday is, along
with that predators are making up profiles stating they are younger people to lure people into
their trap. Even if the users are being smart about who can see their profile, they also have to be
aware of what they or their friends are posting and tagging them in. CBS News reported that
more than half of young Facebook users will get passed up on a job opportunity simple because
of the party animal they portray on their Facebook accounts. Just because it is set to private does
not mean people are not seeing it. It is advised to have two profiles in the social media websites,

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one for you professional life, and one for your personal life, but make sure to keep your personal
profiles locked and only accessible for close friends and family members. Random strangers may
request to add you, if you feel that the profile is shady and could be someone that would stalk
you, dont hesitate to decline the request as it may be an employer trying to take a sneak into
your personal life.
Additionally, once you created a profile, you have to maintain it constantly. The value of the
site relies on the quality along with quantity of people who use it, according to The Wall Street
Journal. If the quality of people on the site is low it leads companies to search elsewhere to fill
positions, thus discrediting the site for being a large market connection with employee and
company. On a more individual level, it is time consuming and takes a lot of work right out of
the gate to develop a professional and effective profile. Experts believe maintaining a LinkedIn
profile is time consuming but not difficult, and the payoff comes from the maintenance.
Joshua Kiley director of the Kelley School of Business Career Planning Career Office at IUPUI
states LinkedIn is what you make of it meaning if the time and energy isn't put into the profile,
the profit won't be as great.
Furthermore, some employers may be misled by ones profile on social networks as they are
under the radical imagination that social networks have become all knowing, god-like, and
limitlessly powerful is a common thread in the negative futures associated with social
networking. According to Mishra, todays social networks seem omnipresent, omniscient, and
omnipotent and its almost shocking that a Facebook-Google-LinkedIn-Twitter hybrid hasnt
already evolved into a dystopian version of singularity, subjugated nation states, and enslaved all
humanity.
In conclusion, professional social networks open an entirely new prospect for recruiting with an

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endless potential. It does not only enable the future employees to reach out to the employers but
also let the employers know more about who they are hiring. It gives everyone a media platform
to network efficiently on a global level, which is crucial in the business world. Despite having
various drawbacks, these social networks will continue to thrive in the future. The evolution of
professional social networking highlights the positive use and future of social networking. Sites
like LinkedIn have become essential to any future professional.

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Churchill, N. (2013, March 26). Why LinkedIn is important for your professional future.

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Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com/nina-churchill/1325071/why-linkedin-importantyour-professional-future
Doyle, A. (2013, October 22). How to use LinkedIn. Retrieved from
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