Recently I attended a local technology networking event. There seems to be about one a day here in Cambridge, but in general they’re pretty good and you get to meet some interesting people. This event was no exception and I left having had some useful chats and with a few business card in my pocket. The next day I did what we should all do, follow-up, so sent one or two emails and also invited some people to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Now personally I think LinkedIn is an excellent tool. It’s a great way to get in touch and stay in touch with people you know. Also from a sales perspective it’s very useful for getting introductions to people. If you search for someone you’d like to meet and they are two degrees away (only one contact between you), then you can ask your contact for an intro and away you go. If you can’t get an introduction or they are three or more degrees away you can at least research the person prior to cold-calling. So you know where they’ve worked before, their career trajectory, their education, etc. All very useful background.
Returning to my networking event; one of the people who I invited to connect to me did so, but on closer inspection I noticed that his contacts were hidden. This is a well-documented option and obviously I’ve come across it before, but for some reason this time I found it really annoying. Is it just me or is this against the whole ethos of LinkedIn? Surely joining a social network that’s based on the power of networking & introductions, connecting with someone and getting to see all of their connections but refusing to share your own is just plain mean?
I can understand why someone might choose to do this. If you’re in sales you may not want to show possible competitors who your customers are, you may want to avoid a headhunter farming your contacts, or you may just feel that you’ve gathered your them over the years, why you should share them? I thought about this early on when using LinkedIn and in the end decided that for LinkedIn to work best there has to be a degree of reciprocity (you show me yours and I’ll show you mine), otherwise it wouldn’t be half as powerful as it is. If everyone hid their contacts where would we be?
So let’s see what you think…