Should I accept friend requests on Linkedin.com from people I have never heard of?
Asked by
ETpro (
34605
)
January 26th, 2010
I know that on some Social Media sites like Twitter the whole game is about getting as many people to follow you as possible. There, having people become “Friends” when they don’t really know you from Adam is a good thing.
I’m not sure about a site like www.Linkedin.com. With its business oriented mission, having a large group of friends seems a good thing. But when you accept friend requests from people you actually have never heard of before, you give them a tiny share of your own credibility. What if they turn out to be total rip-off artists and one of your real friends trusts them in a business deal partly because they saw that the two of you were connected on Linkedin?
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10 Answers
My motto is to NEVER accept ANYTHING from someone you don’t know. I think you’re just asking for trouble there. You never know who or what you’re hooking up with. So to answer your question in one word…NO!!!
Todays answer is NO. these could be hackers from South Africa. they will tell you anything just to get you to click on their site. once you do, they have your email address and can send viruses to your computer. they will also worry you to death with all kinds of pop ups.
No, and why would you want to? I certainly don’t need to.
No, I would only accept requests from people you know and/or work with. The point of Linkedin.com is to bolster your credentials in your career. So, how would “Joe Blow” help you with that?
No, of course not. The whole point of LinkedIn is networks of people who can actually recommend each other.
I disagree with all these people. If whoever’s trying to add you is in the same field, why not add them? A huge part of business is networking. Linkedin is not Facebook, its purpose is not to keep up with your friends. It’s meant to meet professionals like yourself and share ideas and contacts.
I do not. I regard connecting (not “friending”) on LinkedIn as an implicit professional recommendation, or at least a willingness to be associated with the person professionally. Those public connections become part of my professional reputation, and I won’t connect with people whose work I don’t know or whom I don’t respect. My aim is not to secure the largest possible number of links but to establish a reciprocal relationship in which my standing among my peers reflects well on them and vice versa.
I ignore a lot of requests from people I do know for just this reason: if anyone contacted me and asked what I think of X’s work, do I want to lie or do I want to have to say he’s a lousy writer? The answer is neither. So X is not in my list of connections.
As for people I don’t know: never. Absolutely. Not even if they worked in the next unit or attended dial-in meetings with me. If I only know of them, it’s not good enough.
I never add anyone to LinkedIn whom I have not worked directly with, or is less than one link away from getting at credible information about. There are a lot of people trolling out there for job contacts, or are looking at building up a sales list.
Thanks, everyone. I appreciate all the views on it.
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