Networking or list building?
February 12th, 2007Author: DialogueMedia
On Monday afternoon, I caught this question on LinkedIn’s Answers system, discussing people who were “open networkers” on that system, meaning people who just connect up with anyone and everyone who asks them to. While I see some of the points for the pro-open network being valid, I think it ends up defeating the purpose of a LinkedIn in the first place, which was to get rid of all kinds of “unqualified” or “unwanted” sales calls, random pitches, or emails from people you don’t know or trust. Should LinkedIn halt the practice? Nope, there’s no reason to halt what these folks are doing in amassing 20,000 “connections” to their lists, just like regulating a lot of other things on the ‘net doesn’t make sense. But when I choose to connect up with people on LinkedIn, and I’m at about 250 right now, it’s to people that I either know pretty well in a flesh-and-blood kind of sense, have regular communications with online and/or off, or are a part of a group or organization with, and by design, have a level of trust in. That’s not to say that any person who has 1,800 links or whatever doesn’t “know” those people, but as you stretch yourself that way, the believability that one could potentially know enough about that many people to make a solid recommendation for a job inquiry, sales call, or interview request becomes smaller and smaller.
What do those of you who use LinkedIn think about this, and do you connect up with people you really don’t know at all just to build a list of connections?
[ed: as I'm about to post this at 2:07pm Eastern on Tuesday, LinkedIn is, of course, down for the moment]
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Tags: Social Networking
