Database Technology Trends
Behind The Scenes of Database Technology

If you are an avid social network user, you have heard about LinkedIn and/or Plaxo. These are the leading social network sites, especially for IT profesionals. So, what can you expect from these sites and which one is the better choice.

First up LinkedIn:

LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman. He started LinkedIn with the distinct knowledge he collected during his stay at PayPal. When eBay bought PayPal, it was not because PayPal was a superior money transfer program, but because of its member base. Armed with this knowledge, LinkedIn quickly approached 9 million members shortly after its first release. Now it has over 25 million members and it is growing at a rapid pace.

LinkedIn offers a free and a paid membership. The free membership is preferred for the casual user of the site. If you want to manage your connections more effective and possibily build new business via LinkedIn, the paid membership id recommended.

If you’re an Outlook user, LinkedIn offers a nice plugin that helps to keep your Outlook contacts up-to-date with changes in the LinkedIn information. This is especially useful if you have a large connection net and use LinkedIn as your personal address book. I really like to “Grab” function of the plugin. It allows to mark address information in an email and then automatically create an Outlook contact. It is very accurate and reduces manual typing.

My personal profile on LinkedIn looks like this:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/peterdobler

Next up Plaxo:

Plaxo was founded by Todd Masonis and Camron Ring. They realized quickly that the success of a social network site is messured by its free tools and integration into as many email clients as possible. 40 million members are living proof that integration and superior tools are key success factors.

Like LinkedIn, Plaxo offers a free and a paid membership. Instead of more communication possibilities, Plaxo offers more tools to colaborate in the paid membership. You can upload your Outlook calendar as a free member, but you need to be a paid member to synchornize your online Plaxo calendar with your Outlook calendar. This is very useful if you want to combine your private calendar with your work calendar.

Personally I like to Plaxo Outlook plugin better than the LinkedIn plugin. It is better integrated and I like the feature that downloads the Plaxo pictures into your Outlook contacts. When you read an email from a contact that has a picture it shows in your inbox. Very nice.

Here’s how my Plaxo profile looks like:
http://peterdobler.myplaxo.com/

Summary

Both sites are very reputable social networks with millions of members. I use both. LinkedIn as the primary network for all my contacts. Plaxo as the added information resource with a nice Outlook integration.

One of the advantages in combining both systems. Plaxo keeps track on its member’s birthdays. LinkedIn does not. But if you have a connection in Plaxo it downloads the birthdate and the LinkedIn dashboard will remind you to send a card.

I recommend both sites equaly and a membership in both is a good investment.

I had a dream last night; ok to be honest it was nightmare. I actually awoke in a cold sweat. I was back working in a company with what my boss called a good problem to have. A new series of products aimed at a market that was growing like crazy. You know the kind I am talking about - 50% growth quarter over quarter. We were under pressure to keep increasing production and making our quarterly projections so that our publicly traded company could continue to grow market value and to remain in the position of darling in the eyes of the analysts.

As my subconscious mind recalled the challenges that I struggled with: lack of capacity planning and utilization metrics, training new management and operations associates, machine downtime and efficiency loss, material allocations from suppliers, changes in demand which causes increase machine change-over and more lost run time, design and testing issues which had to be worked out during the day time again causing loss of run time, IT down time causing production bottlenecks and well you get the picture…

It took me a few minutes to realize why I was putting myself through such an agonizing night. I had earlier in the day been introduced to the solution to all of my problems but only five years too late!

I had met my nightmare’s white knight: a closed loop Business Event Management Tool from one of my new alliance partners. Oh to be able to go back in time and apply a tool of this kind to my nightmare, I could have saved a headful of grey hair.

Click here to learn more about BEM.

In its latest effort to organize Sybase DBA, Sybase relays on the power of one of the oldest social networks Xing. This network was first started in Europe as a vehicle to connect business professionals. Sybase selected Xing due to its globale reach. Xing members are connected around the globe in over 16 languages.

Of course LinkedIn and its latest follower Plaxo are much larger regarding its member base, but both networks are US focused and do not appeal to non english speaking members.

Xing is the perfect partner for Sybase to support its global presence. I am a member of Xing Sybase DBA Group to connect with other Sybase DBA. I encourage every Sybase DBA to register with XIng and signing up to the Sybase DBA Group.

See you at Xing.