Readers Prefer LinkedIn For Business

eWEEK readers prefer LinkedIn for business social networking, but Google+ is currently hotter than Facebook, according to the results of a poll.

LinkedIn came top, scoring double the votes of any other social network, in an eWEEK Europe poll, which asked “What is the best social network for business. Google+ beat Facebook and Twitter, but no other social networks got any significant support.

Google+ is good, but it ‘s no LinkedIn….

Despite being a fraction of the size of Facebook’s 750 million users LinkedIn still has strong support from the business community and clear attractions for eWEEK  readers – it scored 40 percent of the votes in our poll.

Still, more than 15 percent of people who voted said Facebook was best for business. We aren’t arguing with that – we have a Facebook page and are happy to take discussions there.

However, Google+ surprised us, jumping in at number 2 in front of Facebook with 21 percent. Since its launch las month, Google+ has shot to 20 million visitors. However, while many business people like its possibilities for managing different levels of sharing, it has the drawback that business pages are not yet allowed there, and accounts which are not “human” names are deleted.

Twitter is often at the top of business social charts for its ability to broadcast information easily, and the way the interest of the Twitterverse can be gauged, through trending hashtags, did surprisingly poorly, with only 11 percent of the vote.

Other social networks, designed for business use generally reach a smaller group of users. However enthusiastic those people are, they weren’t enough to boost any of the likes of Yammer, Chatter, or BranchOut above the also-ran category.

Those contenders all fell below the “Other” category which suggested alternative options such as the phone or the pub.

Next: what is your top IT issue?

Next time around, tell us what would send you to the barricades. What is the most important issue facing the tech community at the moment?

Is it energy efficiency and the constant battle to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint, simultaneously saving the company and the planet?

Or is it the move to the cloud (or maybe fighting against the move to cloud)?

Perhaps you feel we should take a stance on copyright, perhaps in the field of business software, patents, or the “theft” of media content?

Do you think we need to call the government’s IT strategy to account?

Or do you feel the answer is blindingly obvious – if we don’t have better broadband coverage the whole country is doomed.

As always let us know what you think – and if you have a better answer, click the “Other” option.