Professional network service

A professional network service (or, in an Internet context, simply professional network) is a type of social network service that is focused solely on interactions and relationships of a business nature rather than including personal, nonbusiness interactions.

Notable examples include LinkedIn, BEAM, and XING.

A professional network service is used by business individuals to establish and maintain professional contacts and a way to either find work or get ahead in career as well as gain resources and opportunities for networking. According to LinkedIn managing director Clifford Rosenberg in an interview by AAP in 2010, "[t]his is really a call to action for professionals to re-address their use of social networks and begin to reap as many rewards from networking professionally as they do personally." Businesses mostly depend on resources and information outside company and in order to get what they need, they need to reach out and professionally network to others, such as employees or clients as well as potential opportunities.

"Nardi, Whittaker and Schwarz (2002) point at three main tasks that they believe networkers need to attend in order to keep a successful professional (intentional) network: building a network, maintaining the network and activating selected contacts. They stress that networkers need to continue to add new contacts to their network in order to access as many resources as possible, and to maintain their network through staying in touch with their contacts. This is so that the contacts are easy to activate when the networker has work that needs to be done."

By using a professional network service, businesses are able to keep all of their networks up-to-date, in order, and help figure out the best way to efficiently get in touch with each of them. A service that can do all that helps relieve some of the stress when trying to get things done.

Not all professional network services are online sites that help promote a business. There are services that connect the user to other services that help promote the business other than online sites, such as phone/Internet companies that provide services and companies that specifically are designed to do all of the promoting, online and in person, for a business.

In 1997, professional network services started up throughout the world and continue to grow. The first recognizable site to combine all features, such as create profiles, add friends, and search friends, was SixDegrees.com. According to Boyd and Ellison's article, "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship", "[f]rom 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends." Boyd and Ellison go on to say that the next wave began with Ryze.com in 2001. It was introduced as a new way "to help people leverage their business networks."

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