LinkedIn and Academia.edu - Thing 11 and Thing 12

So, we are asked to blog about social networking sites. I’ve had a look at Academia.edu and explored the contacts and links to research.  But I am already a user of LinkedIn and I’m on ResearchGate, so I think I will leave it at that.  ResearchGate is very similar to Academia – a sort of mixture of Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, with groups, comments and ‘follow’ buttons.   

I’ve been on LinkedIn for a few years and found it helpful as a way of presenting a professional profile.  In the last six months it has helped me to trace particular individuals for interviewing for my work and occasionally I have a search around for LinkedIn contacts with whom I’ve lost touch. And I’m not sure I would have been able to find them otherwise.  I confess I don’t know how to get the best from the ‘skills and expertise’ section of LinkedIn though.  I’m reluctant to tag my own and some of my contacts have randomly given me skills I question that I have!  That’s kind, but weird.