There are two things you need to do RIGHT NOW.
1 — Sign up with Plaxo, and add your current home and work information. (If you have them, add the information for your blogs, Flickr streams, Twitter and other web accounts, too.)
2 — Sign up with LinkedIn, and add however much of your resume/CV you’d like.
No matter what you do or where you are in your career, this will be of tremendous use to you.
Plaxo
What the hell is Plaxo? It’s your addressbook on steroids, and synchronized like the fastest rowing boat you’ve ever seen. If you’re on Plaxo and move (either jobs or homes), as soon as you update your information it’s automatically updated in your friends’ and colleagues’ address books! (If they’re also Plaxo members, that is.) When your friends move, their information is automatically updated in your address book. Perhaps more importantly, you can select with each person how much of your information they can see… home, work, and other levels of access. It’s great!
Furqan talks about the latest version of Plaxo here, and John Jantsch of “Duct Tape Marketing” discusses Plaxo here. I know as I get close to Christmas card season, I wish everyone I know had Plaxo accounts! It’s also nice that Plaxo will send you e-mails to remind you of peoples’ birthdays, which can help make sure you don’t miss any important dates.
One of the coolest things about Plaxo is that it synchronizes all of your contacts and calendars across accounts and computers! Just check out this video for more information!
https://www.youtube.com/v/n-yXudmFowE
What the hell is LinkedIn? It’s your resume/CV online, and connections to your entire professional network. Whether you’re looking for information on a company you’re going to do business with, trying to recruit someone for a job at your company, LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to take advantage of the network you already have. (You can have LinkedIn scan your contacts list to find people that are already members.)
You may not see benefits from joining straight away, but at some point, it will be invaluable for you.
Once you’re all hooked up…
Then you can combine Plaxo and LinkedIn if you want to! (I haven’t, but it is possible.) TechCrunch said that Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant. Furqan talks about the combination of tools here, relative to a discussion on how to get introduced to venture capitalists.
It’s a small fee that Plaxo charges for their Pro-level account, but then you can attach your LinkedIn account with your Plaxo account so that both of these great services are synch’d up, as well.
Summary
Do it now… register with Plaxo and register with LinkedIn. You’ll be glad you did.
Jed Christiansen 