Sure enough, Bergin found the executive on Facebook, and he was surprised to find that his message was promptly returned the next morning. It didn’t translate into a job placement, but he was able to resume a potentially beneficial business relationship.

Bergin, with 109 connections on LinkedIn, is not a super-connector. But Marc Freedman, a chief executive in Dallas in who has 12,827 LinkedIn connections (No. 21 on the site), definitely is, and he says that these online connections have made a difference in the way he does business.

Freedman’s company, DallasBlue Business Network, is a networking outfit that organizes seminars, meetings, and happy hours in the Dallas area, so extending his brand to the online world was a natural transition. He finds LinkedIn a more intimate way of networking than briefly exchanging business cards with a stranger at a convention.

“If I meet someone at a business meeting, I may get a few minutes to talk to them,” he says. “But it’s an isolated communication and quickly forgotten. With LinkedIn, I get rich background from their profile, plus I see our mutual connections.”

“It takes place in a deep and personal way,” he adds. Freedman has even created a website, MyLink500.com, that tracks the ups and downs of LinkedIn’s super-connectors.

For executives like Filipowski, who have other social and charitable commitments, nothing compares to their “real-world” contacts. A gregarious man, Filipowski is a frequent public speaker on entrepreneurship, a board member and trustee at the University of North Carolina, and chairman of the board at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicines. He is also a co-owner of the Winston-Salem Warthogs baseball team, a Class A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

Nearly 80 percent of his LinkedIn contacts have come from other people’s invitations, he estimates. Yet he also acknowledges that he has met people through LinkedIn that he would not have otherwise.

One such meeting was with a Canadian man with bipolar disorder who was having difficulty getting a job and supporting his family. Filipowski says he was able to assist the man in finding employment and the connection has evolved into an online friendship.

“I’ve considered LinkedIn a fortunate waste of time,” Filipowski says. “I didn’t start out to network, but I accidentally met some folks along the way.”