We need to talk about LinkedIn

"You have 5 personalised connection requests left this month."

"You have reached the limit of new connection requests this month."

Who decided that growing your network using genuine, personalised connection requests was something to be used as leverage to pay for a premium account?

So the end result is people trying to grow their network by lazily clicking on 'connect' and doing nothing else. Hoping that somehow the person they want to connect with can read their mind as to the motivation for wanting to connect.

And those receiving connection requests have to similarly click blindly to accept without any context, or visit the potential connection's profile and try to guess at the motivations.

LinkedIn is in business to make money.

We all understand that. But by eroding the features available to those with free accounts it's cutting off its very lifeblood.

Those recruiters won't want to pay for access to a database that never has new additions to it. That undergraduate won't be able to grow their network of connections at the start of their career, so they won't use the platform regularly.

LinkedIn needs members who gain value from being connected to others. It needs to be encouraging young people starting their careers to grow their network, or allowing those who have been unexpectedly laid off to do the same. Both of these groups by their nature can't afford the luxury of premium accounts.

The essence of LinkedIn has always been about fostering professional relationships, enabling career growth, and facilitating meaningful exchanges of knowledge.

These crude restrictions on members who don't pay LinkedIn fees are counter-productive for the health of LinkedIn. One can only assume they are the very crudest way of discouraging spam or fake accounts.

But forcing people to pay for the most basic functions of a social network is one sure way to kill off that social network.

I hope that when the results of this experiment become clear (drop off in new member joining rates, drop in connection requests, drop in connection acceptances, drop in eyeballs viewing adverts) LinkedIn realises how ignorant these new practices are, and revokes them.

There are plenty of ways to encourage people to pay for premium accounts. What amounts to coercion to grow your network isn't one of them.

• What's your view? Are you a paying member or do you have a free account? How do you feel about these restrictions coming into place?