Think it's too late to pitch a tent?

I'm feeling a strange wariness towards LinkedIn.   It could be that the name of it reminds me of an episode of Stargate, where a community of people are living in an ever shrinking biodome on a toxic planet, and are permanently connected via a direct neural interface to something called the link which, as well as providing them with access to information, also revises their memories so that they never know that it's gradually sending people off outside to their deaths.  So it was with some completely unwarranted trepidation that I signed up to the site and started poking around.   I'd heard of LinkedIn before, and knew it to be a professional networking site - the non-social version of Facebook, if you like, but had never explored it myself.   I can entirely see the point of the site - I like to keep my personal and professional identities largely separate so to have a place where you can get the benefit of social networking but also be sure that your holiday snaps and party photos are well out of the way (not to mention all the insight into your life outside of work) is a great idea.   However I'm not certain I'm entirely comfortable with the public-ness of LinkedIn.   It really does seem very geared towards networking in terms of finding professional opportunities, and pushes you to almost advertise yourself on the web, which is not really what I want to do.   The edit profile tab just scares me away with all the big green and blue 'add this information here!' exhortations, far more in your face than Facebook (from what I remember, anyway).   I talked about privacy settings in my post about Facebook, and how I think it's really important to have control over what information you put out on the web, so the first place I went was the 'edit my public profile' and unticked most of the options, just the same as how on Facebook I've closed everything down to friends-only.   To be honest, I haven't put much information on LinkedIn anyway, and what is there is what I'd consider to be public information - my name, work email and where I work.   Perhaps I'm oddly inconsistent where the web is concerned, as I've merrily put all sorts of information about myself all over the place, but I like to do so on my own terms and for a reason, rather than just in a 'look at me' way.   It's one of the reasons I deeply disliked Myspace (which I was on, for a while), and I think sites that have this approach do turn people off.   I've heard many complaints from people about web 2.0 in general that it's all about broadcasting or advertising yourself, which I don't actually think is right, and it's certainly not what attracts me to it personally.   For my library, sure, I want to put us out there and broadcast and advertise as widely as possible, but I want to market my library!   I don't want to market myself - I just want to keep in touch with people and share things and find information and contribute to the global conversation, almost, and I love how there are so many sites that make that possible and easy now.   Admittedly, having only just signed up, I haven't explored LinkedIn fully, but I think if it sold itself more on that aspect (as it does have groups, for example) rather than on 'look at me, here's what I can do, give me a job' aspect I'd find it more appealing.