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Of the 54 job-seekers hoping to understand why all the world is atwitter about social networking, Linda Holley fell somewhere in the middle.

Unlike the unfortunate Luddite souls who arrived at last week’s Social Media Workshop unable to connect a laptop to the Internet, Holley at least brought a passing knowledge of websites and e-mail to the seminar.

Still, Holley is of a certain age. It was an age when "linked in" described a backyard fence, "delicious" was an ice cream sundae and "twitter" was what their heart did the moment they first laid eyes on the person who would become their spouse.

Holley, an unemployed travel industry sales rep, has come to terms with her limitations.

"I am not," she said, "an early adapter."

To which Steve Drake retorts: better late than ever. Drake was swept up by the Twitter craze in November.

The founder of the Chesterfield management firm Drake & Co. figures if a guy "as old as I am" can become a Twitter aficionado, anyone can.

That’s why the workshop sponsor, Businesspersons Between Jobs, asked him to facilitate the daylong seminar to introduce the social-network challenged to Facebook, LinkedIn, delicious.com (a bookmarking tool) and the ubiquitous Twitter.

From the get-go, it was pretty obvious Holley was going to be a tough sell.

"I was LinkedIn," she said during a break at the New Horizons Computer Learning Center, the St. Louis County facility that hosted the workshop. "But I didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do with it. I’m a reasonably intelligent person, which is why this is so frustrating."

What’s even more bedeviling, Holley added in a telephone interview this week, is the way online social networks suddenly emerged as the bridge between joblessness and gainful employment.

"I still think networking the old-fashioned way is not a bad way of doing things," she mused pay day loans no credit check. Be that as it may, Holley knows she has little choice but to sign up, sign on and network, network, network.

She proceeded cautiously in the days following the workshop, building up to the point where, by Wednesday of this week, I received a private message from her via Twitter.

Not long after, an invitation to join Holley’s LinkedIn network landed in my inbox.

LinkedIn also suggests Holley and I have a mutual business "connection."

And though Holley has joined Facebook, she can’t envision herself wiling away hours searching for names out of the past.

Of that, we are of the same mind: If we really cared about the long-lost friendships that materialize out of the Facebook ether, then we never would have allowed those friendships to lapse in the first place.

More to the point, Holley fails to see how a network that is the face of social interaction will help her get a job. Ditto, Twitter.

"If I want to talk to you, I can’t do it in 140 (characters)," Holley says.

Drake disagrees.

He maintains the abbreviated Twitter messages that come to the attention of recruiters or potential employers initiate a larger conversation about a job-seeker’s qualifications.

"It’s not the 140 characters" that are important, he said, "it’s the (content of the link) you post with it."

Holley, unconvinced, has decided to cast her lot with LinkedIn.

"I’m not going to bother with Twitter, I’m going to bother with getting a job," she announced.

Drake is not surprised.

"For these people, I think LinkedIn is probably the best way to go," said the 65-year-old, pointedly referring to those of a certain age.

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