One of my favorite follows over the years on Twitter has been @TrendRida–Michael K. Dawson. He knows his entrepreneurship and he knows his technology stocks. And, above all else, as the Twitter handle suggests he knows his trends. When he has a thesis, you should listen. 

Here are some excerpts from his latest blog post about LinkedIn. 

I’m Giving LinkedIn and $LNKD a Second Look

Although I had set up a LinkedIn account before I left the corporate scene in 2006, it sat dormant.  Even with the excitement surrounding the IPO in 2011, I never fired it up. After the urging of a couple of friends, I decided to take another look at it in January of this year.

I updated my profile and re-connected with some old friends. Some of my old lunch buddies were Vice Presidents while others were still old lunch buddies.  It was amazing to see how their careers had progressed or regressed.  LinkedIn’s power as a job search platform was undeniable.

That’s basically what I expected, but there was so much more. As a former sales guy, I immediately saw its benefits as a sales tool.  A big part of our strategy meetings were understanding a company’s organizational structure.  Who reports to who, what products were they responsible for and who were the real decision makers.  LinkedIn has it is all laid out for you by the people who know it best – the customers.  It also includes all kinds of relationship data like interests and favorite restaurants.  This thing is a gold mine.

That said, the reason I’m still kicking LinkedIn tires today are the groups.  There are 1000s of groups on almost any professional topic that you can imagine. There are nearly 3000 entrepreneurial groups alone.  The groups are as broad or as specific as you would like.  For instance, On Startups – The Community for Entrepreneurs has nearly 350,000 members.  Whereas, there are many small niche groups with less than 100 members.

This is the  kind of interaction that locked me in to Twitter.

READ THE FULL POST HERE