The Rise Of The “Social Professional” Network
[Philip Lelyveld comment; Why is this thought of as unusual. There have been professional societies for decades. This is just a faster turn-around enabler.]
The notion of a social network for every type of employee might be far-fetched, though. It’s not as if coffee baristas have a compelling need to join a network of other coffee baristas. Vertical professional networks are likely to be the most attractive to highly skilled knowledge workers. Think software engineers (GitHub), mechanical engineers (GrabCad), data scientists (Kaggle) and academics (Academia.edu and ResearchGate).
These networks are far from “niche.” GitHub has well over 6 million registered users and Academia.edu boasts more than 10 million users.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/28/the-rise-of-the-social-professional-networks/?ncid=tcdaily