Wednesday, 5 October 2011

When Social Media gets Antisocial

I don't have that many connections on LinkedIn - I'm way behind some people that I know, who are on the 500+ level. In fact I'm on 163. So not that bad.

The thing is, I know for a fact that some of my connections (only some, not all of them by any stretch) have people in their network that they've never spoken to, let alone had any professional or personal dealings with them. I know this because I've received connect requests from people in their network, and done the obvious thing - "Hi John, what's this Liz like? I ask, because she's in your network". And that's when I find out that John has no idea about Liz, she just wanted to join his network, and he wanted a bigger network.

So I'm with the "official" LinkedIn guidelines on this one.

The upshot is that I do actually know everyone in my network. I might not have spoken to some of them in a while, but at some point I've spent a fair amount of time with them - so if you ask me about any of them, I can tell you about them. It also means that a lot of my friends are in my LinkedIn network, I know them, I trust them, and I'd recommend them to you without hesitation.

So it's a great way of keeping up with what my friends are all up to. Good to know that John is now not only connected to Liz, but also Alice, Brian, Clare and David, and is planning a trip to South Africa having won a major client there. As we haven't seen each other for a while, I did email John last week because some of us are going out for a beer, and it would be great if he could join us. In fact I texted him as well, when I didn't get a reply to the email, but I've not had a text back either. I know that he is very busy, from all these LinkedIn status updates I keep reading.

So if you are reading this, we really would love to see you at the pub next week, surely you have a couple of minutes spare to let me know one way or the other, in between expanding your LinkedIn network? In fact you must have a couple of minutes spare, as you've just been reading this.

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