Yes, you might decided you need to network more – but ‘networking’ is itself only a means to an end to achieve an objective. You’re also a guru of social media in this city, so you have a natural propensity to explore these things! Confronted with a boardroom scenario however, a series of ‘fad’ sounding words and a lot of “potential” and “maybes” probably isn’t going to win much support. (Unless you have that unfortunate management-by-buzzword situation!)

To bring more people to the table, I think we need to talk their language – and their objectives. Then based on those objectives, analyse the potential of the tools available. Then the boardroom folk will have a more easily digestible “Achieve this objective via this means”.

It’s very early days for online services such as LinkedIn – we still need to understand, and then get a feel for, what it is these tools can do. Then when there’s a business need we can decide which are the most appropriate.

I take the point about Q1 being more compelling, but my answer to Q2 might easily be – ooh, I need to do more networking so yes, I’ll use LinkedIn.

Also, I reckon there should be a shift from looking at the tool to looking at the poeple on the other end of it. LinkedIn (and others) deliver people. Ok, so the orig question was coming from a certain viewpoint, but it’d be much easier to explain LinkedIn’s potential usefulness by communicating about the audience and opportunities it offers instead.