I accept only people I know, but my bar is lower than my bar on Facebook. Basically anyone I've (or could have) exchanged business cards with is ok. I actually

I accept only people I know, but my bar is lower than my bar on Facebook. Basically anyone I've (or could have) exchanged business cards with is ok. I actually find LinkedIn very useful, and am kind of baffled by people who say they find zero value in it. I do find many of their practices annoying; it's far from perfect. And I agree with a lot in the article. But I've been working for 20 years, and having a reasonably complete way to search all of my former co-workers, and where they currently work is amazingly powerful. Whenever I am thinking of applying to a job at some company, I can spend 30 seconds looking on LinkedIn to see if I already know someone inside (which not only drastically improves my chances of getting an interview, but also can yield much more candid information about what it's like to work there). Similarly, if I need a professional contact at some company to solve a problem at work, my LinkedIn account is hugely useful. This might be skewed by the fact that I've worked in some pretty big-name companies, so I have a large network of other people who tend to work at well-known places. But I basically view it as an automatically updating and easily searchable rolodex. And it works great for that.