Beyond LinkedIn: 6 Social Media Sites for IT Pros & Developers

Social networks aren’t just for socializing. Those with a professional and technical focus are helpful for connecting you to people in your field, finding ways to enhance your development skills, and putting you in front of potential employers looking for those skills.

If you’ve posted a professional profile to LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, you’re off to a good start. But there are six other sites that every IT pro should check out:

• Spiceworks — Created by an IT pro (former colleague of Steve Jobs and Spiceworks co-founder & CEO Scott Abel) for other IT pros, this site’s goal is to “provide the tools they need to do their jobs every day” via a free network management app as well as a community of 5 million IT professionals.

• Solaborate — This social and collaboration platform for technology professionals provides tools and services to help increase productivity. Join for free to collaborate and network with other tech pros around IT products and services.

• GitHub — This site, free for open-source projects and starting at $7 per month for private repositories, is a code-hosting site with more than 11.3 million code repositories. You can participate in “the world’s largest open source community” through OS project collaboration and code review and discussion.

• Stack Overflow — This free Q&A site is a compendium for programmers.

• Slashdot — Founded in 1997, this well-known tech site is a great source for tech-related news (particularly Linux and Open Source issues), and a fantastic way to drive traffic to your own website.

• CodeProject — This site is basically a message board for anything code-related. Participants can post and comment on articles and questions and answer polls. The site also provides free source code and tutorials for software developers and software architects.

Social networks let you take part in a daily give-and-take with others in your industry. Keep your skills fresh and expand your network by diving deeper into tech community sites like these.