Alison Doyle from About.com wrote some good points about how to grow your social network meaningfully, instead of just growing it rapidly because you think it helps. Doyle suggests forming relationships and building trust early on so that when you need a new job your connections will already be in place. Grow your network slowly and deliberately. Your network won’t appear overnight, so that’s why you should get started early by connecting with people you’ve known in the past. Then connect with others in your industry that you have yet to meet, but try to avoid networking with random people. Instead, stick to people with whom you share a common interest. But most importantly of all…. Make sure that you are aware that anyone can access your site, so don’t say or do anything online that you wouldn’t want someone else to see.