(ISF) LinkedIn invitations and other etiquettical dilemmas of online social networking

Dear ISF Colleagues,

LinkedIn <www.linkedin.com> seems to be sorting itself out as the
really serious, professional social networking web site. Once I
joined it, I saw that a lot of valued colleagues in the nonprofit
technology world also used it.

The web site sort of lays down the law about being picky about sending
or accepting invitations to connect via LinkIn:

===

"Only accept an invitation if you know the sender and want them in your network.

Accept invitations when:

* You want to stay in touch with the inviter
* You know and trust their judgment and expertise
* You've worked with them and would recommend them
* They know your work and can represent your potential

Do not accept invitations when:

* You don't know the sender well (consider replying or deciding later)
* If you don't know the sender at all, click on the "I don't know"
button or "Flag as Spam""

===

These days, I get invitations to connect on LinkedIn from people whose
that I don't know well, or whose work I don't know at all. (In some
cases, I don't even recognize their names.) I would be really hard
put to recommend them - not because I have a negative opinion, but
because I can't say anything intelligent about their work.

So, my questions for the group are:

1) How seriously do you take the LinkedIn guidelines (or any social
networking tool's guidelines) for connecting?

2) If you decide to decline an invitation to connect, how do you do
it politely, without closing the door on the possibility that in the
future you will work closely with the invitee and then feel qualified
to recommend them?

Many thanks and best regards from Deborah

Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finn%40post.harvard.edu">deborah_elizabeth_finnpost.harvard.edu
www.cyber-yenta.org

Recommended reading:
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights&quot;
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights>;

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Hi Deborah,

Timely posting as I just received an invitation from one of my former research assistants. I accepted the invitation because I knew her, before I knew anything about the website. She is a graduating MBA student so I assumed she had some confidence in the site. Once at the site, I found it very straightforward and transparent.

Regards,

Dale

-----original message-----
>&gt;These days, I get invitations to connect on LinkedIn from people whose
that I don't know well, or whose work I don't know at all. (In some
cases, I don't even recognize their names.) I would be really hard
put to recommend them - not because I have a negative opinion, but
because I can't say anything intelligent about their work. So, my questions for the group are: 1) How seriously do you take the LinkedIn guidelines (or any social networking tool's guidelines) for connecting? 2) If you decide to decline an invitation to connect, how do you do it politely, without closing the door on the possibility that in the future you will work closely with the invitee and then feel qualified to recommend them?>&gt;

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I'm pretty new to LinkedIn, but I'll admit to using a fairly liberal interpretation of

&gt; * You want to stay in touch with the inviter

In one case I didn't know the person at all, but I did know his company. Outside of LinkedIn, my company and his had recommended each other a couple of times. [We're both quite small and have a similar focus but different target markets.] So in the spirit of networking, I accepted his invitation.

Was that a misuse of the system? Is *any* connection an implicit *personal* recommendation? Or can the system survive with a somewhat lower standard? I'd hope it could. Otherwise, connecting to college classmates of 20+ years ago will open the network to connections that are just as suspect as the one I made based on "well, if they hired him, he's apt to be a good guy."

-Nancy

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-----original message-----
>&gt; I'm pretty new to LinkedIn, but I'll admit to using a fairly
liberal interpretation of
> > * You want to stay in touch with the inviter>;>

Dear Nancy, and other esteemed colleagues:

It's dawning on me that I take the LinkedIn criteria much more
seriously than I do other online networks, such as Orkut or
Friendster. A lot of them are quasi-social / quasi-professional. But
LinkedIn seems very professionally oriented.

I was actually interviewed for a Boston Globe article on this topic last fall...

"Nice To Delete You"
<http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2006/09/30/nice_to_delete_you/?page=2>;

...and even though I gave the journalist (a delightful guy named
Johnny Diaz) a barge load of my opinions on the subject, I still think
I haven't mastered a gracious way of responding.

Best regards from Deborah

Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finn%40post.harvard.edu">deborah_elizabeth_finnpost.harvard.edu
www.cyber-yenta.org

Recommended reading:
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights&quot;
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights>;

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.

Deborah, thanks for bringing this up! I just received an invite from someone who's only connection to me, as far as I can recall or tell, is that she worked at a Goodwill about four years ago and I worked at one for about 7 years, until a few weeks ago. I don't recall having ever met her.

So, as to 1), I will likely not make this connection. I think I might have if she had continued on with non-profits after Goodwill, but she moved from there to a very big oil company, one that's been in the news lately for making record profits. For me, my network on LinkedIn is of people that I either have enjoyed working with or would like to work with. That makes it a simple criteria check when I'm invited, and I think it's quite in line with the guidelines you quoted. I received a flurry of invites after NTC, all from people that I've been bumping to in person and online for a while now, and I didn't hesitate to connect with any of them. But they were all people who I could easily put faces and other associations to.

As to 2), I'm not sure if I have a good answer. Nobody has ever declined an invitation from me, only ignored them. And, so far, I've only invited people that i know pretty well. It hadn't occurred to me that responding without connecting was an option. So i think I will send a polite note to this person asking if we have more of a relationship than I can recall (e.g., have we ever met?) and tell her that, if not, I don't connect with people that I don't know. LinkedIn is about referrals and the company you keep, and she should be careful about inviting strangers as well. Working for Goodwill does not amount to a character reference.

I suspect that, had you not posed this question, I wouldn't have done anything, so I appreciate being prodded to think about it.

--
Peter Campbell
http://techcafeteria.com

-----original message-----
>&gt;1) How seriously do you take the LinkedIn guidelines (or any social networking tool's guidelines) for connecting? 2) If you decide to decline an invitation to connect, how do you do it politely, without closing the door on the possibility that in the future you will work closely with the invitee and then feel qualified to recommend them?
&gt;>

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I signed up for Linked In a few years ago when a colleague sent me an invitation, then I didn't hear much from it until last fall, when I started getting a fairly steady stream of link requests (which I suppose means the site has started to become popular). So far, they've all been from people I've worked with, I've accepted every one of them, and I've been interested to see what they've all been up to since I last heard from them. Honestly, unless I really disliked the person or had no idea on earth who they were, I'd accept the invitation to link to them. I see the site as a network of past and present colleagues and acquaintances, not a list of people I'd recommend. There's actually a separate feature in Linked In for recommending someone, and I'd use a much higher standard for that.

Bill Kaplan

-----original message-----
>&gt;It's dawning on me that I take the LinkedIn criteria much more seriously than I do other online networks, such as Orkut or Friendster. A lot of them are quasi-social / quasi-professional. But LinkedIn seems very professionally oriented.&gt;>

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Deborah,

A very interesting question. Linkedin does indeed seem to have a different standard for "connections&quot; than sites like friendster or myspace, because it implies a level of trust.

When I get an invitation from someone I don't know at all (b/c they are a recruiter, or because we worked at the same place but never met and they just spammed everyone), I just reject the invitation. No harm, no foul. There is a little box you can check that says "I don't know this person well enough&quot; or something like that.

If I get an invitation from someone I kinda barely sorta know, as in by name only, I usually ignore it.

I have sent many invitations, some of which have been ignored - its not a big deal - people have different reasons for signing up/linking.

I think my main criteria is, is this someone I trust? If they are a friend (even from long ago), or a colleague who you have interacted with, then that is enough for me.

The one exception I made to this rule was to link to Ron Bates, who is linked to everyone - I did just to get access to a wider range of profiles. I may drop this connection though - it artificially inflates my numbers.

Karl Brown

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What I find fascinating is that people seem to value their personal connections and take them very seriously, yet don't give a second thought to providing this information to LinkedIn. Who the heck is LinkedIn and why should we trust them with such valuable personal information? Just curious.

Regards,
Dan Prives
Where Most Needed
The Charity Industry Blog
http://www.wheremostneeded.org

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I think LinkedIn represents another disruptive technology. It's probably already cutting into the business of executive recruiters and, as with everything, will grow and start cutting in on mid-level recruiting business as well,. Ultimately, this is going to be the model for job hunting, where your resume and work history are supplemented by recommendations, and you can do your networking online, finding connections at the companies that you want to work for instead of coming in cold. LinkedIn does charge for some of that, but they're far more economical than a recruiter.

In the Bay Area, Paul Lamb and his friends at Streettech, a Workforce Development agency that he founded, have been getting their clients set up on LinkedIn and teaching them how it's used. This is brilliant. Whewn I was at Goodwill, I pushed the idea that we should have a social network that our clients join for life. This would give them three things:

1. A network where graduates can establish mentor relationships with current clients;

2. A system that Goodwill can use to better mention retention (it's always a challenge to keep track of our clients after the initial placement);

3. A network that our clients can use for job referrals, reaching out to graduates in the world for that critical inside referral.

The fact is that over 75% of all jobs are filled now by referral, not recruiting/want ads. If you don't have a network (online or offline, preferably both), you are at a serious disadvantage. Using/building these networks for ourselves and, in cases where we address issues of poverty, our clients, is a big piece of promoting self-sufficiency.

--
Peter Campbell
http://techcafeteria.com

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Deborah:

Here's my take on LinkedIN:

a) For me, it's not a popularity contest (or if it is, it's a contest I'm apparently losing). Regardless, there is no incentive (for me) to have MORE contacts or less, for that matter.

b) I have invested very little time in it - acting as a passive participant, rather than actively sending out invites. Just between you and me, I think I'd be embarrassed to for some reason. It just seem so, ah.. impersonal; must violate my high-tech/high-touch karmic balance or some such.

c) I ONLY accept invitations from people I know. I get lots of ones from people I don't know - and, matter of fact, I can't imagine why. I don't know them, I'm not about to recommend them for anything.

d) I have yet to recommend anyone - I'm not sure what use it would be - at least through the LinkedIN mechanism. I usually do recommendations and introductions personally anyway. I would find using LinkedIN for this sort of thing just too "impersonal.&quot;

e) I don't worry about it. If I don't know the person, I just delete the invite - especially if it's the generic invite text. I may pause to wonder just what they were thinking.

f) I have yet to figure out what good it is, in general. The people that I know... well, I already know them. So LinkedIN adds no value there.

g) What I have found kind of interesting are the "degrees of separation" between people I know that may or may not know each other. That I find interesting - it's kind of a large socio-gram.

h) Also, of note, was the research that Beth Kanter tried to do using LinkedIN to find experts on some topic (I forgot the exact topic). I'm not sure it was successful.

Regards

Gavin

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