Friday September 15, 2006 One of my takeaway from Sun's recent process of restructuring and Layoff in the month of August is Linkedin.com. As D-day was approaching everybody was diligently involved in creating & maintaining their contact-database. Linkedin.com was one of the various ways people were using and that's how I came to know about it.
Linkedin is more of an address book with a level of indirection. You maintain a list of links to people's entries which they keep on updating as they move around. Main intellection behind it is network ie you have contacts of some people, these People in turn have contacts of more people and that's how this chain of contacts goes on and on. Should the need arise, all you have to do is check your linked-in chain and find person you need to get in touch with.
After having used it for more than a month I am finding it very beneficial to make and maintain my contacts in IT Universe. As of today I have around 17 direct connections, but as per LinkedIn calculations, I have over 308500 people directly or indirectly available in my network. 
In comparison with blogs which is a great means for creating relationships, Linkedin is an amazing means to solidify them.
Happy Linking ... 