My current employer found me through LinkedIn. I get messages from recruiters on there every now and then that I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise, so it seems like it was worth the 15 minutes it took me to setup and maintain my account. I'm the bare minimum user too, I have 18 contacts and 0 recommendations.
Yeah, don't get me wrong... LinkedIn has a place and I too have found some good connections through it, but what I am talking about is the actual 'groups' feature. It just doesn't seem very functional and the only value added is having direct contacts (which while nice, also causes me to get some spam via it). I have joined some of them before, but that is pretty much the last thing I do as I don't see any value in it afterwards.
I find smaller groups very useful. For example I'm hiring at the moment and I've directly approached some people I don't know personally who are in groups that are small and represent (for me) a type of hacker I want to hire.
The groups are less useful when large, but when small they can offer a way to locate people who could be perfect for you (and you for them).
I see a benefit in this case (indeed this is the first thing that convinced me to join linkedin). There are a lot of people here I'd personally love to connect with more - of this helps with that then great!
I think LinkedIn is very useful if you sell to or deal a lot with medium and large corporations in the US (in Europe LinkedIn competes with Xing). I work in big-ticket B2B sales and LinkedIn is an awesome tool to prospect and research potential partners and clients.
To be quite brazen about it, the only point I see in LinkedIn groups is to slap the logo of a former employer/assocation/whatever on my page so that people see it when they look at my profile.
I suggest you try and find people who would either be prospective partners or clients of your project, write a brief message to them, and ask them to review your work and comment.
Also, answering questions relevant to your interest area on LinkedIn is a good way to make contact with people who have problems they are trying to solve.
I see the point of LinkedIn groups, but it feels like the groups are starting to get polluted. It almost feels like Facebook. I really enjoy Hacker News and see why I would want to be part of that group on LinkedIn.
But I don't need another badge, another forum for questions, and another list.
Which is a shame because I think the a Hacker News LinkedIn group makes sense.
I'd gladly help you make that little logo/icon/badge more attractive, just for the satisfaction of knowing one less bad one is showing up in HN readers' profiles.
Good idea. It's just too bad that for the general populace, "Hacker" is a bad term, and this logo on people's pages would be a turn-off for those who aren't somewhat tech-savvy. People think hacker = cracker.
