More than a year ago, I came across Chiristopher Allen’s solid analysis of several social networking sites and bookmarked it; I re-read it today while cleaning out my bookmarks (a singularly post-modern, 21st century drudgery) and pretty much everything he wrote still holds true.

I use LinkedIn (profile here, although I doubt you can view it unless you’re a member), and the basic Cocktail Party Rule applies: If you are polite and know how to gently work a room, you can make some spectacularly useful contacts; if you wander around like a bull in a china shop wondering how many people you can “sell,” then you’re not going to get too far.

On LinkedIn, as with online dating sites and every AOL chatroom ever created, it might be the meek who inherit the earth, but the communicators are going to end up owning the internet.

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