Thank you for the comment you leave on my site. It helped me make the distinction between your own point of view and the one of Mr Allen.

Please keep us informed through your book and through your site about the best ways to use the net to enhance our business abilities.

Robin

Thank you for the opportunity you give us to share views on tha great topic !

From my perspective, that question is about responsibility.

Would you like it or not, what people are looking for on LinkedIn, OpenBC and other SNs is a mix of YOU and YOUR NETWORK.

That is why you have to be conscious about who you connect to, for numerous reasons.
But if you never open the door to someone you do not know yet, you miss something (see below). On the other hand, requests such as “I am building a network, let’s connect” ar NO LONGER enough in most of the cases (except if the person is recommended by someone I trust).

People like rules and figures and this one is popping up in France these days
-> what percentage of people in my online network should I REALLY know (what is really, actually ? we will see below)
=> MY ANSWER is usually the following: “depending on your current situation and future projects, anything between 30% and 80% is fine”. The best figure for me on average is 80%.

WHY 30% is a minimum ?
=> if you know (email exchange, phone conversation, meeting, recommendations are ways to “know someone”) less than 30% of your online network, you will often be in a uncomfortable situation on requests-based platforms (such as LinkedIn) : passing on requests from people you don’t know to people you don’t know…or WORST: blocking these requests BECAUSE you do not know enough the sender or the receiver. LinkedIn is unfortunately poisoned by people who have many contacts they don’t know (ask people : you will be surprised).

WHY 80% is a good figure ?
=> on the other hand, if you ONLY connect to people you already know (the 100% figure) , you probably miss some opportunities (the weak link factor) for YOU and YOUR NETWORK and do not show yourself as open as someone on these networks is supposed to be (for how long will they be “friendly” networks ?). And if you have a trouble one day (someone cheating you or people you know), you keep control and credit in your network by excluding him and apologize to your network.

Finally, be careful, clear and transparent about what you are interested in and answer to requests, would it be by YES or a NO. From my perspective, their is nothing WORST than NOT answering to request for a contact.

What about you ? What is your current percentage ? Your view about the IDEAL percentage ?
Please share with us the percentage of people you are connected to and actually know, thank you.

But this is my humble opinion and I understand others do not share that view. For those who share that view (and others), be my guest on one or several platforms I use daily : openbc (favourite), linkedin (largest), or soflow (just started recently by a poll about social networking).

Finally, as these networks are part of our lives and our lives is about working hard and having fun : give me a good reason or make me laugh if you want me to be part of your network !

Have a great day ! (as “good” is no longer enough for most of us…)

Yann

I have spent a bit of time using both LinkedIn and eCademy, the latter to offer perhaps a bit more international coverage and exposure.

I have found that certainly the “depth” of one’s contacts truly proves to be most valuable in terms of being able to add value to those who seek you guidance and counsel or referral to a knowledgable individual. Also, I would hate to somehow mar my carefully established relationships by a flippant referral without having first vetted the opportunity/question/request first myself.

Nonetheless, as I seek to network a bit more in the Baltimore/Washington metro area, I find that a few “supernetworkers” with 50,000 connections have actually proven helpful on LinkedIn in allowing me to reach and actually to enjoy healthy and fruitful conversations with individuals who are even 4 degrees away from me.

Perhaps the best advice may be simply to remain aware of the nature and potential effects of each time of communication and referral. Sometimes to pause and reflect before requesting or referring may indicate the best course of action.

I believe that both breadth and depth will remain complementary and that we will all continue to struggle with them.

It seems like the superior model would be one that also included some sort of strength metric based on actual communications — But that already exists, and hasn’t gotten the traction LinkedIn has.

Unfortunately, I don’t really see a solution. It’s sort of a “Tragedy of the Commons” problem. It sounds terrible in principle to dictate (or at least heavily influence) how people use the system by imposing some kind of “rationing”, but without it, its overuse may end up destroying (or at least trivializing) the common resource.

What you really need is a model that “costs” (not necessarily monetarily, but in some other way if not) the heavy users more. This is the solution to the Tragedy of the Commons archetype. The trick is finding the right cost model that stabilizes the use of the commons.

IMHO the correct answer is C.

Unfortunately a good % of the highly connected people in LI have built networks of people they DO NOT KNOW! So what good is a network that you can NOT use — that does not really exist — except as a list on your LI page?

Some of the ‘highly connected’ are starting to complain on various LI Yahoo Groups — they don’t have the time to forward 50/requests a day from people, they now realize, they do not know.

A person with many contacts on LI *may* be a good networker — OR — they may be a promiscuous pest! Be careful.