Online Connection Tools: Beware of The Pitfalls (Part Two)

I received some interesting responses to my earlier post about connection tools. Thanks to everyone that took the time to share their experiences, both good and bad.

After getting quite a few emails it appears that I am not alone in the frustration of many of these tools. I know Plaxo and other tools are designed to help us keep up with our contacts which on the surface is a good thing, provided they are used correctly. But what about other online connection tools such as Linked In or Friendster? Do they really help or hurt you?

I signed up for Linked In about two years ago. My morbid fascination about social networking proved too much to resist so I had to see how many people I could potentially be "linked in" with. It was truly an amazing revelation as simply linking up with a few people produced a vast array of potential new connections. After adding a few more people to my network and accepting invitations to be linked in with some other people, my total potential network hovers around 300,000 people. An impressive number but hardly realistic.

The ability to connect "through" people was cool in theory but what did I really gain? So Mike knows Tammy and Tammy happens to work for a company I want to do business with. Seems logical to ask Mike to make a connection on my behalf for Tammy right? Maybe yes and maybe no.

You see the fact that Tammy happens to work someplace that I want to gain access to doesn't necessarily mean that I have the right to ask her. I don't even know her! In fact, asking Mike to bridge the connection can be a slippery slope and potentially damage the relationship he has established with Tammy.

I know someone that wanted very badly to work with DELL. He connected up with a couple of us that had several DELL connections in our "network." Before you know it we were getting lambasted with requests to make this connection or that connection. I politely declined, knowing that my connections out there were loose at best and that they had no role in what his main objective was. Another one of my connections, Jason, wasn't so judicious.

He randomly made connections with the 3 or 4 people he knew at DELL. Several people accepted the invitations to be linked in with this unknown person because they knew Jason and trusted he wouldn't refer someone without good reason. From there, this guy, who shall remain nameless, was pinging his new DELL connections with requests to be connected with people they had listed as their connections. Before long, you can imagine this guy had become a real pest and ended up causing some pretty serious rifts between Jason and his now ex-Dell friends.

Now it would be true to say that this scenario is the exception and that Jason should have showed more prudence in his agreement to connect. That would be true. It would also be true that tools such as linked in can open up a world of opportunity if used correctly. It just becomes painfully obvious that there are more people using tools like this as "toys" rather than for the serious business tools that they were designed to be. That's where the value of the system might not supersede the potential pitfall especially when it comes to letting people see who you deem as your important connections.

One final concern that is worth sharing. I have noticed Linked In and now Friendster are using your contact information to share everything from job openings to less than business oriented opportunities. I just received a "friend" request on Friendster this past week from someone who is in Austin. The information was sketchy but I figured it was worth checking out because most of these tend to be legit. Upon further examination and some clicking on links, my new friend was actually tied into an Adult services business. That's certainly not my cup of tea and it appears that this connection was akin to spam! More importantly it showed the basic breakdown of their system and any value that I once had for that particular service was gone with the Friend Request from "Mandy."

No matter what service you use to connect or stay connected, please travel lightly. You never want to find yourself put in a predicament of compromising the connections that mean something to you. These kinds of services make it way easy to do just that and ultimately it will be impossible to unring a bell that you might not want rung in the first place.