I’ve blogged about this professional networking service before, but time to do it again. They are gradually improving their data mining capabilities, which is changing the face of what LinkedIN represents and how it is used. I envisaged LinkedIN was a way for me to not lose touch with people I know, but I have recently found that it is being used by recruiters as a way to acquire candidates. I get no end of requests from headhunters and recruiters who I have never met before. This got me thinking because I was going to enter a whole load of business cards from people I have met over the years, but in reality if I never met them more than once, do they belong in my network ?
LinkedIN themselves are pushing this barrier with a new data mining technique that analyses my contacts contacts and tries to guess people I might know but am not linked to. So far I would say they are 50/50 accurate with people I know but had forgotten about and people I have never met. So back to the question of value. Some people on LinkedIN are known as Lions and have 500,100 perhaps 3000 contacts. I have about 160, all of whom will know who I am. Are the others any real value ? Just having met someone once doesn’t really add any value. So I have decided to discontinue the idea of entering any business cards and stick to people I know and have met more than once or worked with. I can’t really claim to have properly known more than 1500 people in my entire life. so 10% in professional circumstances seems fine.
So in conclusion I intend to be more disciplined with my LinkedIN account and just use it to do what I first intended and not lose touch entirely with people I don’t see so often.
