A Contest of the Social Networking Tools

Today’s post is ethnocentric. I’m talking about the prominent social networking sites in America: Facebook and LinkedIn. These are the two I’m most familiar with. I’m willing to bet most of my audience is as well. We’re not even going to talk about MySpace, except to mention I won’t touch it with a 29 ½ foot pole.

While my friends and I were in college, Facebook exploded. We all got one and expressed our geeky selves through them. We made groups for Pirate Ninja Zombie Robots and posted pictures. Granted, this wasn’t the only way we made our presence known. We have/had our blogs, websites, podcasts and email. But in the social networking arena, Facebook reigns supreme in effectiveness and ease of use. Best of all, you could get all the scoops on your friends without having to visit individual sites. Snazzy! Of course, we have RSS now as well. (Speaking of which, did you subscribe to this blog yet? You should keep yourself updated on RPO news.)

Facebook used to require a college email address to sign up. I remember there was a link to “Request Facebook for your school!” This kept the spam accounts to a minimum. Now registration is open to anyone. You can make friends with Lindsey Lohan, Martha Washington, and Vin Diesel. You have the option to be very selective about who friends you, and can reject that connection if you so choose.

LinkedIn is the social networking site for professionals (but deep down, it’s very similar to Facebook). I suppose you could create a fake account for LinkedIn, but the professional accountability component tends to deter spam accounts. What would be the point? If LinkedIn had gone through with their April 1 2008 gag, that would result in even fewer spam incidents. Like Facebook, you need not connect with someone if you don’t want to.

Facebook is completely free, unless you want special add-ons. LinkedIn’s basic level is free, but upgrades are available: one can pay for inMails to reach out to new people, and they have a corporate account program. LinkedIn does what it’s designed to do quite well: it puts people in touch with each other and turns a profit. Facebook has controls in place to deter the kind of web-weaving that is encouraged on LinkedIn. However, the recruiters at Novotus are a tenacious group. As with any new tool, the early adopters reap the biggest rewards. I would be interested in seeing long term candidate-point-of-origin metrics on these two groups.

The crux is an evaluation is about how well a tool works. From my experience, a recruiter is far more likely to find a candidate on LinkedIn than Facebook. Why’s that? Well, LinkedIn was designed to find business contacts, plain and simple. Facebook was designed to keep up with friends. Facebook does have a few groups centered on getting jobs, and people are free to promote whatever they want to their groups, but it’s not the key to what they provide. But that’s one of the great things about Novotus; we find ways to make technology work for us. The next time you’re on Facebook, add the Novotus group.

Tags: facebook, lindsey lohan, linkedin, metrics, myspace, novotus, rpo, rpoa, rss, social networking