A whole lot, that’s for sure.  They both enable a fast, easy, secure and reliable way to electronically connect with a community of people you do business with – secure and reliable being the operative words. For over a year, I’ve been getting these LinkedIn invitations from people I know and  I’ve ignored them thinking, “Ug, this is just another way for the beings of the world-wide web to get hold of my information and spam me until the point of insanity.   No way!”  But, then I got an invitation from someone I haven’t heard from in a really long time.  And that hooked me.  I introduced that person to someone in my network and now they are doing business together.  I was the secure vehicle by which a relationship was established.  How cool is that?  B2B ecommerce works the same way.  The problem is establishing secure relationships and keeping them current is very time consuming.  I mean, I am on the verge of alienating my husband, my kids and my dog because from the minute I get home to the minute I go to bed  I’m checking to see who I can “link” to, who changed jobs, and who wants to link to me.  Same thing holds true in B2B.  Not only is it time consuming, but companies, much like people, initially lack the understanding around the benefits of connecting electronically.  They need to be educated and on top of that, the mechanism to connect has to be affordable and easy.   I remember meeting with an EDI Manager of a leading high-tech manufacturer and he told me the biggest thing he loses sleep over is not being able to get all his trading partners connected and enabled.  If he could achieve 100% community participation his company would experience improved employee productivity and reduce supply chain and procurement costs.  He explained that the biggest barrier is helping his trading partners understand why it is worth their time and investment to do business electronically. When I told him about GXS’ mantra for our B2B Community Services, “no trading partner left behind” (btw, our SVP of Marketing still claims this was his brainchild and not President Bush’s), his eyes lit up.  He actually said to me, “GXS can contact my entire trading community, educate them on the value of connecting, manage my entire enablement effort, and provide trading partner technical assistance?  Where do I sign up?”