Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: StephenPSmith.com

Benjamin takes a look at how a broader slice of the young people of today will have much more advanced IT skills than ever before. IT used to be the domain of those with very specialized training, nowadays it seems that every kid on the block is learning HTML and PHP and coding their own websites, writing apps for Facebook, generally doing the things that “nerds” did a generation ago.

…the issue of Facebook versus LinkedIn. For me, the two are complimentary. I use Facebook for personal friends and LinkedIn for work associates, and some people I connect to on both - you’ll find a link to my LinkedIn profile in the about page. They represent two very different faces, excuse pun, of social networking applications. The teen-laden, wild partying Facebook, and the straight-laced executive LinkedIn.

Now I hear of more and more people using even Facebook for business networking. Today’s business leaders and tomorrow’s will be very different. The fact is that social networking tools, in one form or another, are here to stay. I predict they will be standard tools for many large businesses in years to come, although run on private and secure intranets.

Today most IT managers and business leaders are missing out on the potential productivity benefits of these tools. They provide an amazing ability to create and strengthen social bonds in businesses and enable people to find the resources they need to get their job done.

In fact, here is my own Facebook link, which I encourage you to take a look at and invite me to be a friend. On Saturdays I like to go in and play “Friends for Sale”!

Here is the link to my Linked-In profile, and if you’d like to join on as a contact, please do.

Finally, this is my contact info at David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Network. This looks like it will become an essential tool for my new business venture.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6hhv6t. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen