LinkedIn is an ideal way to get the business networking possibilities of Facebook with much, much less of the peripheral noise like wall postings, silly applications and games, annoying memes and what have you. The focus here is on building personal and professional connections. It's networking for a digital age.

As the name suggests, the whole point of LinkedIn is to get you linked in with friends, coworkers, peers and colleagues both current and previous. Whether you're looking to link up with your current colleagues or hoping to reconnect with a former fellow denizen of your first job's cubicle farm, you've come to the right place.

As you fill out more details on your LinkedIn profile, the progress bar on your account page will start to fill up. Adding past and present jobs, uploading a picture, putting your resume online (either public or private) and so on all contribute to your progress meter and the completeness of your profile.

Finding your real-world friends, colleagues and business contacts and extending a request to link up on LinkedIn is a great way to network. We'll show you how to find people you know and make contact, delving into the Advanced Search to make sure the John Smith you're looking for is the John Smith you find. You can also look for jobs, post questions to the LinkedIn community, search for companies, check references and more.

Joining groups is a great way to build your online networks of connections on LinkedIn. And if you can't find the group that's right for you, you can always be a pioneer and create your own group!

LinkedIn is not just another social networking site. In fact, its express purpose is to bring colleagues, partners and friends together to network for mutual benefit. There are no wall posts, flashy themes, spinning text etc. LinkedIn is all about helping its users make valuable business and personal connections online.

Applications let you do more with your LinkedIn profile. However, far from the flashy and often silly themes, games and so on of other social networks, LinkedIn apps all serve some business purpose. You can share presentation files with contacts, post polls and manage important files all through LinkedIn using these applications.

Keeping up with your personal connections' online activity is easy with LinkedIn. Your homepage offers a lot of detail on what your online connections are doing and even suggests people you may know based on your existing contacts.

With LinkedIn you can change the kind of information your profile shares with your network, with personal contacts and with the community at large. You can set certain elements of your profile private and change the kind of LinkedIn notifications you want to receive in your email inbox.

Sometimes you have to pay to play. While LinkedIn is free to use in its basic form and the basic service is enough for most users, there are some advanced features that can only be unlocked by paying up. These advanced features are of most use to people who use LinkedIn a lot professionally, for networking.

Molly McDonald runs through how to get

connected and find your colleagues, friends and potential leads through LinkedIn

. In addition to serving as a place to network, to reconnect with old colleagues and

finding a job

, you can also get questions answered and even potentially find an investor for that big idea you've been cooking up.