LinkedIn is NOT facebook

A few days ago, I saw in my LinkedIn feed a posting by someone making an appeal for people to accept all and any connection requests they receive. His argument was that each connection enrich you and whoever wanted to contact you. That could be a valid stance, except that there is a point where it becomes counter productive.

LinkedIn is based on the degree of separation concept. You may not know someone, but you may know someone who does. For instance, if you are a dangerous megalomaniac intent on world domination, you may not know a mad scientist able to design a doomsday device to coerce the United Nations to do your bidding, not having ever attended the same “Dangerous criminals” convention. But you both may be known by the same secret agent spy, who could put you both in contact, and even vouch for the evil nature you share.

If Mr. Doom decides to do business with Dr. Evil, they then can decide to connect directly later, moving from 2nd to 1st degree connection. And if they do not connect, one can still follow the progress of the other by, well, following them.

So, what is wrong with connecting?

Nothing. Except if one is over-connecting. And when one is over connecting is an assessment to be done by you rather by whoever would want to connect to you (or worse, be an advocate for all out, no hold barred connection).

When I joined LinkedIn, some 15 or so years ago, I initially connected with people I actually knew. There were a few dozen of them who already were on LinkedIn, and the system was quick to identify people with whom I shared a background of some sort. And that was good; there were a few 2nd degree contacts who were identified when needed, and the 'get introduced' feature meant that one was more or less vouched for by someone who knew both you and that 2nd contact of yours.

Later, we saw more and more of those people describing themselves as “open linker”, meaning that would link with just anyone, without restriction.

And I am sorry, but that is not that good.

If the intention of LinkedIn is to be able to relate to someone, through the friend of a friend, then the whole process gets tainted and cheapened by the concept of “open linker”. Apparently, it was turned into some sort of “who can get the most” competition, and some people were apparently bent on turning LinkedIn into a slightly more sophisticated and professional looking version of 'facebook', where the objective is to get as many people who might eventually stumble across some inane “picture of what I had for lunch today” and hopefully get enough “like” so that their empty life would somehow take some value.

It has been calculated that the average individual would personally know about 600 other people. Perhaps only a subset of those are meant to be connecting through LinkedIn, as people you see every day possibly enjoy a much better and closer relationship already, in person, than what social networking allows. And if your reason to be connecting is to share chocolate chip cookie recipes, perhaps you should have that on 'facebook' than on a social network that is meant to focus on business and employment (that is, unless you are a pastry chef, where the recipe exchange would be pertinent).

In the last few years, I started receiving invitation to connect, completely out of the blue. It is my policy NOT to accept just about every single one, quite the opposite. Perhaps someone saw me getting involved in a heated discussion and rightfully humiliating idiots who claim that the Apollo 11 Moon landing was somehow filmed in a studio, and thought it would be nice to connect so that they could track what else I could say. To those people I could only say that flat earthers tend to rear their ugly heads only on special occasions, like the anniversary of a landmark space mission, and most of my posting may on a topic that is clear above your head. Conversely, there is little chance that what you might post about your need for prayers and fundamentalist religion, or obviously staged “injured girl having trouble crossing the street with impatient driver honking”, or the silly stunt of someone skate boarding on the ledge of the 87th floor of a skyscraper would be my cup of tea (actually tea would not be my cup of tea either, I never drink the stuff).

When I get an invitation to connect, the first thing I notice is if it is someone I actually know (obviously), if it was personalized mentioning the reason why we should connect, as opposed to the generic automated, I am lazy and want to connect to dozen of people today so why don't I pick them at random form. My second step is to go view the profile of the person. If we have obvious shared interests, that I see that there could be benefit one way or another, I usually accept.

On the other hand, if I see complete lack of mutual preoccupations, if I see 500+ connections already, or conversely an essentially bare profile with 8 connections (i.e. obviously lacking even family members, real friends and classmates/co-workers), no education or employment entries, no interest listed, I figure it is either a connection collector or a newly created account destined to simply provide exposure for a wanna be virtual exhibitionist. Not interested.

Just recently, I got an invitation to connect. Checking the profile, I thought I saw some mutual interest with computers. Except that, within minutes, I started getting private messages. Here is the verbatim of the conversation (I de-identified the other party; and in case you haven't paid attention, CBVG is me):

TLC 2:07 PM

Hello sir

CBVG 2:07 PM

Hello

TLC 2:08 PM

How are you?

CBVG 2:09 PM

Good, but cooped up in house along with a teenager who's only current purpose in life is playing video games...

TLC 2:10 PM

Lol

You kid??

CBVG 2:12 PM

Yes. My son. 17 year old in one month, and not that eager to make up for the time presently lost from schools having been closed for over a week now.

TLC 2:14 PM

I see!! Guess you having a good time together sir...!!

CBVG 2:17 PM

Not really. He refuses to even have our presence (our being his mother and I) in the same room where he is playing with the computer. He could be in a different planet, that would not change much. Even calling him has a time delay before any response can be expected, and has to be repeated at least twice.

TLC 2:18 PM

lol... sure he really likes video games...

What do you do sir???

CBVG 2:21 PM

Right now, I am between contract. I am an aerospace engineer, but employment in the area has plummeted with Bombardier essentially selling off all its activities. So, I am learning new skills (current ones on the table are Python and FreeCAD). It is either that or going nuts doing nothing.

TLC 2:23 PM

That's awesome

Good for you

I’m a manager for Forex Trader/Binary Options Trading and Bitcoin Mining...

Have you tried investing in bitcoin and crypto currency sir??

CBVG 2:26 PM

No. And given the volatility of the market, crypto currencies seems orders of magnitude more risky than I am willing to consider.

TLC 2:27 PM

Why do you say that sir??

CBVG 2:29 PM

Because crypto currencies are based on zero external sellable assets. They are 100% speculation.

TLC 2:45 PM

It seems silly to some people that one bitcoin can be worth hundreds of dollars.

Let’s look to gold as an example currency. There is a limited amount of gold on earth.

As new gold is mined, there is always less and less gold left and it becomes harder and more expensive to find and mine

The same is true with Bitcoin.

There are only 21 million Bitcoin, and as time goes on, they become harder and harder to mine.

Bitcoin provides sound and predictable monetary policy that can be verified by anyone.

CBVG 2:50 PM

There is a fundamental difference with gold.

Firstly, there are people who like to adorn themselves with trinkets made from the stuff. But gold is also used as a infra-red filter, and in electronic contacts. Bitcoin has zero usage outside of it being seemingly desirable for others.

And as it happens, I have zero desire for it myself.

TLC 2:51 PM

Bitcoins can be sent from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. No bank can block payments or close your account. Bitcoin is censorship resistant money.

Bitcoin makes cross border payments possible, and also provides an easy way for people to escape failed government monetary policy.

If you understand the potential impact of Bitcoin, it won’t be hard to hard to understand why investing in bitcoin may be a good idea.

CBVG 2:52 PM

Looks like you are only interested in peddling bitcoin. I now regret accepting your invitation to connect.

TLC 2:53 PM

Don’t say that sir and I’m sorry ??

I’m only trying to make you see the necessities of crypto currency investment

CBVG 2:54 PM

You have been disconnected. Good day.

TLC 2:54 PM

Good day

To me, it was pretty obvious that TLC was only looking for clients. While that is apparently his business, note that he came across like those pesky real estate agents who call you out of the blue asking if you are in the market to sell your house (usually by claiming that it increased in value. Yeah, right... And I presume the same would be true for wherever I would have had to move to anyway. Of course, higher price means higher commission for THEM, but as far as I am concerned moving means trading a dollar for 4 quarters, minus expenses and fees, plus the trouble of packing and unpacking my stuff. Get lost. If I want to move, I will pick the least annoying of you all; but that will be a while), trying to create a market. Actually, bitcoin could be the topic I might want to cover in the near future...

I am currently getting mighty close to 500 LinkedIn connections already – some of which I consider dropping actually, as accepting them was perhaps an error – meaning that, in the deluge of updates I see each day, a large proportion are not that interesting to me, and actually would distract me from those that I should care about. I will not entertain the notion of neglecting my current valued connections just because you want to add one more as some sort of point gaming system, or with the simple desire to increase the number of views for your irrelevant to me posts.

Do take it personally if you are not doing it in a personal manner.