It used to be that TV talk shows would have big reunification shows, where they would reunite long-lost loves in front of a TV studio audience.
It used to be that people could truly be unable to find one another.
Today, that is simply not the case for personal or business relationships. If you want to connect with old friends, it’s simple to find them, as long as they want to be found.
You’re probably familiar with the power of Facebook for connecting with old friends, but are you familiar with LinkedIN?
LinkedIN is a social network for business people. Basically the idea is that you can connect to anyone through just a few connections or simple lookups.
This is essentially the same idea as connecting to people through Facebook.
However, what makes LinkedIN unique is that it really targets the business marketplace, focusing on helping people make connections with like-minded individuals who can help further their career or business goals.
LinkedIN lets you post previous employers, get letters of reference from friends, and prominently features your work history and resume.
One unique feature of LinkedIN is it’s names directory.
You can find out if someone is on LinkedIN just by putting their name in to the proper URL.
Here’s what the URL looks like:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/FirstName/LastName
My name is Jonathan Kraft. If you wanted to find out whether or not I was on LinkedIn, all you would have to do is this:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Jonathan/Kraft
So for purposes of demonstrating how this is beneficial to you in the “real world”, let’s say that you went to an environmental conference.
You met an engineer there who you wanted to keep in touch with, but somehow you lost his business card.
But you remembered that his name was Steve Heyer.
You know some of his basic details, but really all you remembered was his first and last name, and the town where he was from.
So you would maybe do a Google search for Steve Heyer.
But that would maybe return a bunch of results of Steve Heyers that you weren’t looking for.
But instead of doing that kind of search, you could use LinkedIN’s publisher directory.
Getting all the Steve Heyers who are listed on LinkedIn is easy.
All you need to do is type the following in to your address bar:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Steve/Heyer
Once you do that, you get a full listing of all the Steve Heyers on LinkedIn, and you can find who you are looking for by the details posted alongside their name.
Using the name Steve Heyer, I’ve linked below just so you can see an example of what you might see on LinkedIN.
Are you on LinkedIn? If you are, just try doing this kind of search in your address bar and you will see your own name come up as well. (It’s also fun to see people who share your name, and the kind of work that they do.)
When you do this kind of search, you see other details like job title, background, location, and links to be able to connect with references and other connections.
Going back to our example of Steve Heyer, I can see there are several Steve Heyers (21 at the time of this article), so maybe I would have some difficulty finding the exact Steve Heyer I was looking for, but at least I’ve got a chance now of finding the exact Steve Heyer I am looking for, based on details that I might remember about him.
Before LinkedIn, you might have been looking for a needle in a haystack. This way, it’s a bit more like sorting through just a few needles to find the one you’re looking for.
Go ahead – do a search for your own name and see what comes up. Remember, the address is:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/YourFirstName/YourLastName
If you’re on LinkedIN, you’ll likely find yourself. If you’re not LinkedIN, at least you’ll find out what kinds of interesting people share your name.