They go after two different audiences:
LinkedIn is particularly useful for professional (work-related) connections. From its "about us" page:
[quote]When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you.
Your network consists of your connections, your connections� connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.
Through your network you can:
- Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
- Be found for business opportunities
- Search for great jobs
- Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
- Post and distribute job listings
- Find high-quality passive candidates
- Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know
[/quote]
Facebook is more informal -- it was founded as an online version of the book that many colleges provide with pictures of incoming freshmen, and for several years only college students were allowed to join (you had to have a .edu e-mail address to register, if I recall correctly). Now it's open to anyone. Members -- particularly younger ones -- often share a lot of personal information, along with photographs (some of which could be embarrassing if seen by potential employers or parents!). You can set varying levels of privacy -- from letting anyone with a Facebook account see your profile to allowing anyone in your "networks" (school, employer, city of residence, etc.) to check you out to permitting only people you have specifically "friended" to do so.
My daughter, who graduated from college in 2007 and is now working in New York, would certainly OK a LinkedIn connection with me, but I doubt she would approve a Facebook "friend" request from me! (Would you have wanted your parents to know everything you did when you were 23?)
-- Leslie
