“The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”
–Keith Ferrazzi, Author
INTRODUCTION
Networking, Trust and the Internet
The internet is powerful. But it can hurt or help your networking efforts. Knowing how to combine the internet with your natural skills and abilities and a concerted effort to build and nurture trusting relationships is the core message of this book. With little effort, internet web sites allow us to gather information and insight (intelligence) about companies, people and networking strategies that make sense to your networking efforts. They can be used to guide you and networking partners on how to use your time well. Business-internet-based social networking sites can help you to develop greater visibility in the business community regarding who you are and what you can do. And some sites can help you to develop small group intranet web pages where you and your networking partners can trade information, agree to meet, discuss ideas and celebrate success.
Cautionary tales demonstrate why you shouldn’t exceed the internet’s current capabilities in hopes of finding shortcuts in making the process of networking easier. However, the internet is evolving at warp speed. And if you learn from this book what makes networking successful, you will be able to marry the internet of the future more closely with networking to great benefit for all.
Networking and the internet can also be a useful tool in helping you “network” for a job. Although pervasive joblessness is somewhat new to