From TechCrunch, being a bit snarkier than I’m used to seeing:

VisiblePath Is A Lot Like LinkedIn, Except It’s Useful

Ouch.

For what it’s worth, I consider LinkedIn to be perhaps the only truly useful social networking tool for my needs. It’s also one of the only social networks where most everyone I know professionally bothers to participate in, and is sticky enough that they go back and update their profiles, add new contacts, etc.

I used to discount LinkedIn as being some professional-world version of Classmates.com (not a compliment in my book), but in the past couple of months I’ve found myself accessing the site several times a week and growing my list of contacts substantially.

Just in the past two weeks I’ve reconnected with several old college friends who are now in related professions, and one old manager who I’m meeting shortly to catch up with. So score several points for LinkedIn – I actually find it useful enough to go back to again and again, which is more than I can say for most social networking sites.

I’d like to try VisiblePath so I can do a proper review, but at first glance I’m a bit put off by it’s association with your Outlook inbox. Only my Microsoft-related contacts, calendars, and emails are stored there – everything else resides on a twisted mix of Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. If VisiblePath can somehow navigate all four of those sources, then sign me up!