Sandra, I did a kind of macro-level analysis of social network sites about a year ago, which I presented at ASA. I ran into the same difficulty as your friend. Based on my experience, there had been very little empirical research on LinkedIn. At least until last summer, nearly all research focused on MySpace, Facebook, orkut, or Friendster. In the conference paper there is a discussion on LinkedIn in the series of site histories, and then again in the analytical and concluding sections. If anything, the notes may be useful. If your friend is interested, she can access the conference paper here: http://blauexchange.org/connector_website_model_fullreport.pdf Shorter, published version here: http://www.jiti.net/v07/jiti.v7n1.015-020.pdf Hope this helps, Paul ----------- Paul DiPerna Blau Exchange http://www.blauexchange.org online ID: http://claimid.com/pdiperna ------ Original Message ---- From: Sandra C. Bavasso Roffo <scbr@sinectis.com.ar> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 12:27:23 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] Research on closed social networking sites Hi All, A friend of mine is finishing her thesis that is about social networking sites *nothing original there* but her work has an original a twist. As part of her research she is trying to compare the attitude of the same group of people in a completely closed social networking (closed to alumni of one specific University) against their attitude in a more open online community like LinkedIn. The reason she is using LinkedIn, is that her test group is more into business and career development so most of the alumni are already using LinkedIn. She is working with the 90-9-1 theory of participation and trying to see also how the theory of the "weak links" as generators of business and career opportunities works or not on both sites. I am helping her a little and while we have found extensive research on Facebook, we have found almost nothing on LinkedIn. Any recommendation? She is already sending her survey out but some specific bibliography on LinkedIn will be appreciate! Thanks, Sandra :) _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/