are you linked in?

LinkedIn is a business networking site, opposed to Facebook, which is a see-if-your-old-friends-got-fat site.

As I imported my webmail contacts, I was surprised how few of my friends were on the site. Granted, not that many are looking for jobs, and with an overwhelming number of researchers and graduate students as friends, business networking on the surface seems less necessary. (Academia has a very set path and it's rare to start networking until after your PhD - and need a job.)

I think that should change. Academia is exactly where networking needs to start much earlier. This way, students with similar research projects can know what each other are doing, obtain help easier and to learn about leading researchers in the field.

Academia seems like the place where this can happen naturally, but with the busy work schedules of graduate students and the need to stay in proximity to their experiments, I don't believe online networking has been taken advantage like it could be.