Staying abreast of the latest social networking sites can be so daunting that it has spanwed a form of anxiety that has its own media-given name: "social networking fatigue."

So what's an attorney to do? Should you care about Twitter and the opportunity to keep a network of contacts apprised of daily happenings in no more than 140-character messages?. Should a business litigator stoop to the level of Facebook or MySpace?

A confluence of recent news reports indicate that at least one social networking site has emerged as a dominant and potentially useful networking tool that no law firm

should ignore. That would be LinkedIn. Consider:

• According to legal blogger Steve Matthews, LinkedIn is adding tens of thousands of attorneys to its membership rolls each month.

• Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs reports that there are now more attorneys in the LinkedIn directory than in Martindale.com, lawyers.com and findlaw.com. Many law firms have separate LinkedIn profiles as well.
• Finally, there was news Tuesday that LinkedIn had secured $53 million in venture capital and will likely be rolling out new services in the coming months.

According to the New York Times, LinkedIn is now valued at $1 billion and has seen its membership swell in the last year to 23 million members. The Times reports: "...The average age of a LinkedIn user is 41, the point in life where people are less likely to build their digital identities around dates, parties and photos of revelry. LinkedIn Gives professionals, even the most hopeless wallflower, a painless way to follow the advice of every career counselor: build a network. Users maintain online resumes, establish links with collegues and business acquaintances and then expand their networks to the contacts of their contacts."