Social networking has largely been used to help people get in touch with current, old and future friends. However, one site has taken a stab at connecting people who know the people you know.

LinkedIn.com has become a surprisingly functional resource for me. Many people have asked me what LinkedIn is. I suppose my invitation for them to join me on this network maybe see as an attempt to build my confidence level by how many friends, or “connections” I have, but quite the opposite is true.

Everything that we’ve been given is a gift that we are to steward. It happens to be that over the past 10 years, I’ve been able to grow quite a long list of contacts. While it may pale in comparison to some, it’s been very fruitful for me. Sites like LinkedIn allow connectors like myself to go beyond my current arenas of influence and “connect” with other colleagues, friends, coworkers and prospect clients. But these reasons don’t satisfy my interest entirely.

Ever have a moment on the phone with a horrible customer service rep and wish that you could do something about it? Well, most likely you can. Simply go to www.linkedin.com, click on search and enter in the name of the company you just interacted with and type in “vice president,” for example, into the job title search box. Once you hit search, you’re likely to find all sorts of people who work for this company…most of whom’s names would never, I repeat NEVER be found on their corporate site.

You see, social networking is more than a shallow perception of popularity, it can be a channel of influence if used correctly. In such cases as customer service and other examples, websites like Linkedin.com simply become a world wide address book, where even President’s, CEO’s, VP’s and the like offer up their contact information like a friend would his phone number.

The internet is changing things.