Weak Link..edIn

I love LinkedIn.  It seems to me to be the perfect tool for business professionals to network on line without all the high school drama that comes along with Facebook and MySpace (and sometimes even Twitter) . I have learned how to use it effectively to cultivate business relationships and promote our consulting firm without being aggressive or pushy.  I have also had a blast reconnecting with people I worked with in the past, but lost track of, or just had not heard from in years.  In summary – I’m a big fan.

Last week, my partner Jim Long mentioned to me that he had a conversation with someone that had closed off their LinkedIn connections to others because they didn’t want “…competitors and others to know who they were talking to”.   This struck me as kind of absurd, and a situation that could be resolved in other ways, i.e. turning off notifications.  In fact, the more I thought about it over the weekend, the more absurd it became.

The point of networking is to share contacts and have a mutually beneficial conversation.  Keith Ferrazzi’s book “Never Eat Alone” is one of my favorites, and I have given it to many people who ask me how to get started with networking.  He basically sums up the philosophy of networking like this:

A network functions precisely because there’s a recognition of mutual need…… You can’t amass a network of connections without introducing such connections to others without equal fervor.

The whole point of LinkedIn is to share connections.  Why else be on it??  So… this morning I decided to do something about it.  I went through the 360 connections I have (had) and wrote down those that have made their connections inaccessable to the people connected to them…. and I decided to drop ‘em!  I wrote up a nice little note saying it was nothing personal, but I felt there needed to be a two-way street and we would soon be “unconnected”.  I listed 21 people out of 360 who had shut off their contacts.  Some of them were really hard because they are people I really, really like.  I couldn’t be selective, however.  If you are on the list – you’re out.  Zap – I was down to 339 open connections.

A funny thing has happened in the last few hours.  So far, 4 people have sent me an email saying they never realized their connections were turned off.  They are opening them up – and we are reconnecting!!  Two people have told me they are recruiters and really don’t feel they can share all the contacts they have made (…lame, say I).  One person said they don’t even remember me in the first place.

If you are using LinkedIn, please remember why people joined in the first place and why sharing connections is such an important part of the process.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davegalanis