Linkedin: A Network of 35% Strangers
I’ve been a user of Linkedin for over a year now. I receive invitations from people for me to join their network and, until recently, I’ve unthoughtfully accepted any invitation that came my way. Well, I looked at my network today, and I honestly don’t know half of these people. Sure, there’s an argument that says that I need to keep a rolodex of folks handy for networking purposes, or whatever. But, it’s network of 35% strangers right now.
I’m going to take a pass at it today and clean it up and break connections of folks whom I am not acquainted with in any sense of the word. Doing that will make the tool more valuable than it is right now. Or, for those strangers’ profiles that I find interesting, I can always get to know those people too.
Linkedin is pretty useful; my current job was through a Linkedin connection. I just have to clean up the garbage, that’s all.
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Congratulations! I have received many requests as well, but always reject them. I only link in those that I have personally worked with or know extremely well.
I believe that the value of the network is minimized the more un-valued network connections there are.
Heh. I was just about to go through and clean up my linkedin network this weekend. I don’t think linkedin had a ‘delete’ feature until just a couple months ago, did they?
I picked up a lot of names when I was travelling around, and have a lot of names in there that, I admit, have no recollection of meeting. I know that linkedin is a great tool for recruiters– I worked as a recruiter in Tokyo and linkedin terrified the industry when it first came out.
It’s an interesting side-effect of the ‘nexus’ people– there are link-sluts with thousands of connections, which pretty much means the entire population becomes maybe 2-3 connections away from each other. Theoretically, this helps us all find connections, but it may weaken the “value” of those connections. If someone were only 2 degrees away from me, I should have a pretty close overlap with that person. But because of the link-sluts, I am now 2 degrees away from most of Southern China and a good chunk of Brazil. Hmmmm…
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I’m about fed up with the “invitation spam” within Linkedin myself.