LinkedIn is renowned as the #1 social network for professionals.
Unlike, say, Facebook, professional connections are established to interconnect profiles of individuals in their respective markets.
There are plenty of domain industry professionals on LinkedIn, and making it into the 500+ “Club” is not easy, because every connection needs to be validated by the recipient of the invitation to connect.
There is, however, an apparently easier method to get a high number of connections on LinkedIn, and it’s illustrated in this fake profile we discovered.
The recipe involves getting the photo of an attractive female – preferably, a porn star as in this case – adding some cheesy work credentials (Yahoo XML feed?) and start befriending others.
Apparently, both Monte Cahn and Richard Lau were duped by this fake LinkedIn profile, along with at least 50 others in the domain industry.
I would disagree with your statement that it’s not easy to get 500 LI connections. Every week I get invites from people I’ve never met, with no context as to why I should accept their connection request. I know this is a common experience from discussions with other LinkedIn users. Unless you’re a spammer the important thing with LinkedIn is not how many connections you have, but how many “quality” connections you have that both sides can utilize when needed.
Bob – Obviously, one can accept any invitation, Facebook style, from people that they never engaged in any type or form of business with.
Quality connections on LinkedIn take a long time to establish, unless one adds every ‘faker’ that built a profile to troll others.
On the subject of adding everyone – regardless of having had any business exchange or not – we are 2 degrees apart on LinkedIn. Should I send you an invite? 😀
DG – violent agreement about the fakers and would be delighted to connect on LinkedIn!