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"People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five," writes former Apple evangelist and founder of Garage.com, Guy Kawasaki about the professional benefits of actively maintaining a LinkedIn profile.

A standard rule of journalism is you don't use a quote as your lead. You're also supposed to avoid personal pronouns like "I" and "you," and, above all, not be post-modernly self-conscious in your presentation. Rules, shmules. Nobody else on the Internet is following them.

I start with that quote for its sheer power. For anybody looking to better themselves (i.e., "you"), that bit of self-conscious attention should resonate.

Kawasaki's blog post at "How to Change the World" begins with some hard to ignore facts (he does, after all, attribute the skill of salesmanship for much of his success), before moving on to "Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn," a professional networking site that has attracted 8.5 million users.

If all one really needs is six degrees of Kevin Bacon to make real connections, then eight million Kevin Bacon degrees should up the odds.

Another tidbit that's warrants attention:

All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.

Enough with the professional fun facts. Go visit Kawasaki's "Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn."

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.