Entrepreneur Journal Entry 3: Business and Bacon Numbers

LinkedIn confused me for years. As I was getting started with video production, some of my mentors talked about LinkedIn and told me to get on it. I signed up, but I didn't really take it seriously. I hardly knew anyone, and the people I did know (usually just distantly) worked for companies that didn't interest me at all. To me, LinkedIn seemed like Facebook for old boring people. I ignored it and didn't invest any time in building my connections or profile.

When I started college, however, the topic of LinkedIn started coming up again in my classes. I got annoyed; I thought, "I've already got an account on there; it hasn't helped me at all!" Well of course it didn't--I simply had no idea how to use it.

This week in my Intro to Entrepreneurship class, Steve Davis gave us a run-through of LinkedIn, taught us how to use it, and (the most significant part) shared some success stories of people he knew personally who used LinkedIn.

The presentation was awesome! I was interested the whole time. Wheels started turning in my head; adding one person could give me hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of new connections--new potential opportunities. It's like the Bacon Number on steroids!

The Bacon number of a person is how many connections they are away from actor Kevin Bacon, a connection meaning starring in the same movie. So if Kevin Bacon and Bruce Willis starred in a movie, then Bruce Willis and Steve Carrell starred in another movie, Carrell's Bacon number would be two.

On LinkedIn, the connections of your connections are called your second connections, or "seconds." I thought it was an intriguing and well-designed system. It avoids totally random strangers from connecting with you since you can only connect if you're seconds or thirds (or obviously firsts).

I hope to use LinkedIn more effectively with my new knowledge!