When you live in a world where you can buy your groceries, make a doctor's appointment and pay your monthly bills online, it makes sense that you can also identify and network with potential business partners or employers online. The world of online business networking arrived some time ago when the likes of Linkedin.com and Ryze.com launched their online professional business networking services. Indians all over the world have used online networks since they first surfaced seven years ago, but this past year has seen a quantum leap in traffic to these sites. Preeti Mangala Shekar surfs the Internet to find out the ins and outs of this cyber world explosion.

Social networking sites like Myspace.com are hugely popular and have also been in the news recently for notorious reasons like making online snooping easy. College aspirants found that giving away too much personal information on their MySpace.com page could well jeopardize admission to their dream school. Or you could even be fired if you ratted about your mean boss on your blog. Whereas social networking is fraught with privacy-related peril, its business counterpart comes with more win-win propositions, depending on how much time you spend online.

"How well you network online depends on how much time you spend online; both quality and quantity of time online matters," notes Tejas Rao, a recent business school graduate.

Business networking among Indians, both in India and within the Indian American community, gets a mixed bag of responses. Some like it in doses, others love it, and still others who are wary about jumping on the bandwagon, preferring the old-fashioned way of connecting: face-to-face.

Worthwhile Proposition
Leading online sites like Linkedin.com, Ryze.com, Orkut.com and a growing number of others make online networking a worthwhile and legitimate proposition. They offer a range of paid and free services from employee referrals to connecting with old colleagues.

"Online business networking services basically reflect the way careers and businesses today have to constantly shift and adapt to survive," says Amod Pal, a software consultant with Kaiser Permanente, one of the leading nonprofit health plans based in Oakland, Calif. "I use Linkedin.com to keep track of my friends and colleagues' career trajectories. It's kind of like online snooping, but then again on these sites, the information is out there to be accessed," he explains to Indian Life & Style.

"There so many business networking sites out there. While Linkedin.com is an excellent resource to connect with business partners, there are also others like Zoominfo.com that help you find people in different companies," adds V. Viswanathan, director of business development at Persistent Systems in Santa Clara, Calif. "In fact, there are also specialized sites like Linksv.com that aim to connect people that build technology companies. On the personal side, I have been amazed by the number of connections I have made with long lost friends with one called Orkut.com."

While most business networking sites do not track ethnicity or much personal information, it is a reality that communities gravitate towards each other online. So when Aparna Kasliwal uses online business networking extensively from her home computer in Pune to find buyers for her Indian handicrafts in the U.S., she zones in on desi-named buyers in big markets like Chicago and New Jersey.

"If I have a desi name out there on a post, we get responses overwhelmingly from desis," notes Valli Bindana, creative chief of Kreative Vistas, a company that provides Web animation solutions. "But online networks are real good if one is consistently active on them. Ryze got Kreative Vistas a couple of big contracts that would have been difficult to approach otherwise," adds Bindana, who lives in Milpitas, Calif.

The Old Fashioned Way
On the other hand, a young San Francisco-based business professional, Dhaya, feels otherwise. "Basically, I don't care for online social networking. I got my job the old fashioned way," she says, "through interpersonal networking and getting involved in lots of activities."

D. Shankar, a hardware engineer with Flextronics, based in Mountain View, Calif., echoes Dhaya's skepticism of the hype that surrounds online business networking: "It is good for individuals to find a job or a connection, but the real business deals still draw from informal real-time connections that people make and nurture over the years."

"My favorite online networking site is definitely Linkedin," comments Mythili Sankaran, regional director for the national nonprofit American India Foundation. "Although I feel online resources can help with networking, it can't actually establish a personal connection in my opinion. I think if I were job searching, I would utilize sites like this far more than I do today. But I love Linkedin's efficient user interface. It's easy to use, and easy to get started in the world of online networking," she adds.

Mix It Up
Still others like to mix it up. "I like to use online networking to complement my social life, not take its place. So I basically go online to update my real-life personal and professional contacts," says Sameer Ghosh, a financial analyst with a wealth management firm.

Naina Redhu, an independent Mumbai-based logo designer with Aside.com, built her business credibility entirely online: "I get my business primarily from Openbc.com and Linkedin.com; a lot of clients from the U.S. and Europe who get to see extensive samples of my logo designs on my Web site, read my blog and then connect with me through the networking sites."

In addition to the powerhouse sites like Linkedin.com and Ryze.com, a significant number of Indian Americans and Indians are logged onto Soflow.com, Openbc.com, Zerodegrees.com, Doostang.com and Ziggs.com that entice potential users with a varying blend of social and business networking - a strategy that, however, tends to get less seriously considered in an increasingly time-constrained world of hard business. "Many of the purely desi ones are clunky. For instance, Rediff's Connexions offers too much and doesn't look professional," says Tejas Rao.

"I think generic networking needs are served pretty well by the current social networking sites. Most sites also help users maintain a good control of their privacy," adds Viswanathan. Yet, "While most sites try to make it easy for you to register and connect with people, repeating aspects of this process for each new portal out there does become a hassle. It is like the instant messaging world with one having to manage multiple IDs on multiple messengers. There is a dire need for Web 2.0 aggregation software to better manage these profiles," he suggests.

So, where is online networking going? With online videos poised to be the next big thing, video business networking is likely to be in the offing and could open up truly interesting possibilities to online networking.

DO YOU USE ONLINE NETWORKS TO ASSIST YOUR BUSINESS AND PERSONAL NEEDS? WHAT DOESN'T WORK ONLINE? WHAT MAKES IT SO POPULAR? EMAIL US YOUR THOUGHTS AT INFO@INDIANLIFEANDSTYLE.COM.