Being the "seasoned" lawyer that I am, this new Social Networking craze is driving me crazy. It has turned my ideas about business development upside down.
Several months ago, my business-savy daughter (who is a business development whiz) suggested that I join this organization called Linkedin - - which I did.
The very next day, I started to get "hits" from people that I did not know, did not want to know, and who did not know me -- asking me to "connect" with them.
I was afraid to respond to their requests, remembering the trouble "connecting" with people I did not know used to get me into in my younger days. So, I did not respond.
Requests to connect kept coming in. Some were repeats. Some sent me nasty messages because I had unheeded their prior requests. Some even came from foreign countries - - I could not even pronounce their names.
I got "warning" messages from Linkedin that my "In Box" was jammed full of unanswered messages and that I had better respond to them, so I started responding to some of the requests. How do you say "No," diplomatically?
But, to the few to whom I did "connect," I now find that I have thousands of "connections" to even more people I don't know - - who send me even more messages.
The other day I meet a fellow lawyer who bragged that he had 200,000+ connections on Linkedin. It exhausts me to even think that one would have to keep up a correspondence (or even know) that many people.
What ever happened to the "good old days" when you would actually shake the hand, or even give a hug, to the new people you meet. I think that I would rather get 5 hugs than have 200,000+ names on a List.
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