Jon Samsel

Some people know Carl Bressler as the memorable character, Saul Berg from the feature film, The Usual Suspects (1995). Others will recognize Carl as one of the most prolific social networkers on LinkedIn, number 275 (most globally connected) out of 23 million + people on LinkedIn, as of September 1st, 2008.

I’ve known Carl for many years–back in the day when Carl was an actor, agent and producer and I was shifting careers from Hollywood Agent to Multimedia writer and business entrepreneur. I had the good fortune of catching up with Carl recently via email and I asked him a few questions about the power of social networking.

Q: How many LinkedIn connections do you have?

A: 6,613 and counting. I started migrating my contact database online back in March of 2004.

Q: Why the dedication to LinkedIn as opposed to Plaxo, Facebook or other social networking services?

A: Well, I have always been a power networking kind of guy. Plaxo couldn’t handle my 10,000+ contact list and Linkedin was the right solution when I started wanting someone other than me to keep track of my contacts. I am dedicated to FaceBook as well.

Q: Are there any benefits to being so well connected?

A: Interesting people ask to meet me. And I get to help people.

Q: What would you like people to know about you that may not be apprarent until someone gets to know you?

A: Always coming from mutuality.

Q: What’s your number one personal goal for the year?

A: A personal goal for 2009 is to get in better physical condition. Professional? Get in better financial position!

Q: In your opinion, can companies benefit from social networking?

A: Sure, all companies can benefit. From generating sales leads to conducting free market research to finding new sources of funding.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 2:34 am and is filed under E-Business, Interviews, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.