Derek Huether

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Take a fresh look at LinkedIn Connections

Image Credit: Pictofigo

I'm slowly pruning my LinkedIn network. I recently noticed a lot of junk in my LinkedIn feed. It's like the second coming of Facebook or Twitter. That's when I noticed a lot of the junk is from people I don't really know in real life (IRL). If I actually know you, I'm probably more tolerable of weird stuff you might share. But, if I don't know you, chances are you're going to get unfollowed and the connection removed. It's hard to maintain real relationships.

After a deeper review, I believe LinkedIn uses "Connections" as a KPI and does not want us to remove them. In the last week, I lost the ability to remove a connection from a users post. Click on the ... in the upper right corner of a post in your feed. You can still easily unfollow the person (it leaves the connection but hides them from your feed). But a week ago, there was also a "remove connection" option. You’ll now have to take the extra step of clicking on their profile to remove the connection (which notifies them that you're looking at their profile).

The connection pruning continues.

I believe for LinkedIn to maintain being a relevant business networking site, people need to start looking at having quality connections and not just accept every connection request. Nobody should care if you have 500+ connections to people you don't know. It's like having 500+ followers on Twitter and 99% of them are bots.

What are your thoughts? What's your policy for accepting or not accepting connections on LinkedIn?