What's with all the new Linkedin flock I am gathering?
Asked by
ETpro (
34605
)
July 19th, 2013
I used to get invitations from numerous people I’d never heard of, asking me to join their Linkedin network of business associates. I always assumed they were just trying to build what appeared to be an impressive array of business relations by stuffing it with strangers. I politely declined.
As far as I know, I did nothing deliberate to trigger the new wave of people suddenly following me. But for the past 2 months, I’ve been getting a deluge of emails from Linkedin saying that so-and-so has accepted your invitation to Connect. What invitation? In that entire time, I have not sent out a single invitation, and I certainly haven’t sent one to someone I’ve never heard of.
Every one of these new Connections are people I do not know from Adam and never intentionally invited to become a Linkedin Connection.
Is Linkedin just playing silly games to try to make itself appear more relevant than it really is in today’s blizzard of social media, or did I somehow inadvertently trigger some algorithm that tries to match me with other members and then invites them on my behalf without my even knowing it’s happening.
Of greater concern, what’s the business impact of having a huge Linkedin “fluther”? From a business perspective, is it likely to be harmful or helpful to inflate my Connections list? For those who don’t know, I’m self employed as a Web developer concentrating on e-commerce and the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Store platform.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
11 Answers
Yes, happens to me, too, and it’s because it’s failing and unpopular if you want my opinion. No one in my business community goes there, they still check FB accounts.
LinkedIn is more annoying than Facebook ever dreamed of becoming. Once you’re linked it is virtually impossible to get rid of someone. And it seems to continually prompt you to get more involved, endorsing and adding people.
For a long time, an old boss who I viewed as ethically impaired sent me an invite that seemed to reestablish itself every time I clicked “ignore”. Didn’t go away until I complained, but LinkedIn never sent any reply or acknowledgement.
Me too. I have also been getting spam from Adrianna multiple times every day.
@KNOWITALL I think you are absolutely right. From what @zenvelo and @YARNLADY have to say, I guess I’ll just ignore it. If it becomes too obtrusive, I’ll killfile Linkedin emails.
If the e-mail implies you started/initiated the contact, it is SPAM. I have had several and all were in my spam folder.
I got a notice the other day that Linkedin now allows “following”. My guess is, this means that people can follow you without an invite or a connection, but that their email wording hasn’t been updated to reflect the new terms.
@Tropical_Willie So far, none routed to spam. I use gmail and they are pretty aggressive about keeping an up-to-date list.
@augustlan That may very well be it. Thanks.
I know that I’ve received several invitations (though not recently) to connect with friends who have legitimate LinkedIn accounts, and who were not aware that invitations had been sent out to their address books, etc. There are lots of forum posts around the internet talking about LinkedIn doing this. There are ways for the invitee to unsubscribe, and I usually do that, but the LinkedIn users in question are generally not savvy enough to figure out how to prevent the invitations from going out. I think there has to be a way to prevent invitations from being sent without the user’s knowledge – but it probably takes some investigation.
@glacial Thanks. I’ll nose around in forums like slashdot and see what I can learn. But I’m really conflicted. If potential clients check me out in Linkedin, it might behove me to have an army of followers. :-)
@ETpro Yeah, I can’t speak from the perspective of someone who has and wants a LinkedIn account, only from that of the people receiving and being pissed off by their spam. ;)
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
