Relationships Matter

That's the LinkedIn tagline. I started on LinkedIn last year and while I cannot say it has changed my life, it has provided a neat interface to stay in touch with colleagues who I don't see every day. Sure, we get jealous (or confused) sometimes when we see that someone has 500+ connections (who are these people?). The major complaint I hear about LinkedIn is that if you are not consistently using it (for recruiting purposes, say), you tend to forget about the service and therefore not check in very often.

So, from Guy Kawasaki, one-time Apple evangelist, author of Art of the Start, and currently an active venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, here is a link to one of his most popular posts: The Top Ten Ways To Use LinkedIn.

At the beginning he rattles of some very interesting statistics so don't forget to scroll down to see the complete list. Did you know...

• The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.

• The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight.

• People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.

• All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.