Comments on: If I Fall Into One More Social Network Tool I’m Going To Scream Like a Banshee

By: My Big Left Toe is in Facebook » CogDogBlog

My Big Left Toe is in Facebook » CogDogBlog — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:45:47 +0000

[...] the other hand, the banshee screaming will rise even more since all of these systems bag you with notices by email. I am ignoring abouty [...]

By: Ruminate » Blog Archive » More Twittering

Ruminate » Blog Archive » More Twittering — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:36:08 +0000

[...] I was talking about it a while back, but now others including Alan and D’Arcy are starting to take notice of the potential of Twitter. I’m curious how they’ll take to it over a longer period of time. [...]

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:39:38 +0000

Scott- you’re so damn logical, rational, and spot on. I certainly see, especially from scanning full out profiles, how this benefits someone needing to make the connections and have heard some powerful success stories.

My gripes were lower on the importance scale— I think all the amounts of interaction with the system being back and forth by email feels clunky.

By: Scott Leslie

Scott Leslie — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:35:08 +0000

Alan, I think one of the reasons why LinkedIn may not have appealed to you is that you really need to want to use it for what it’s trying to enable. Take a look at http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html – I think if you are in industry and looking to make connections whether for job leads or sales leads, then LinkedIn can be one useful tool. That’s not to say it couldn’t be useful in higher ed too, but as big as higher ed may seem at times, in reality it seems like a huge proportion of the links that people form (research partnerships, hires …) are built on top of existing ‘networks,’ be they geographically bound, bound by discipline and related ‘societies’ or what have you. So we get a lot of people in the field getting LinkedIn accounts and making connections but then not really sure why, in part because it doesn’t necessarily serve the way they’ve done ‘business’ in the past. My take at least.

By: that’s ten minutes I’ll never get back « Ninmah Meets World

that’s ten minutes I’ll never get back « Ninmah Meets World — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:24:00 +0000

[...] Let’s talk about LinkedIn. I’ve been meaning to get, er, linked in for a while now, but only actually did it this morning after reading Alan’s very appropriately titled post on the topic. The very first thing I did was to send a couple of gauche, uncustomized invitations to co-workers (sorry guys). I hate, repeat hate, that I have to bother someone in order to add them as a contact. Yeah, I see the point; we don’t want unknown losers claiming us as their friends, and we want to be careful about who gets to contact whom. But can’t the email thing happen somewhere else? Like when I actually try to impinge on these people I claim to know by asking for introductions or information? Gah! [...]

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:31:53 +0000

No apologies needed, Twitter-master. There are some interesting threads at work there. Twitter is intensely, almost solely social. And there is something about the immediacy of it all.

By: Cole

Cole — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:18:53 +0000

Sorry about Twitter, but there is something interesting there. Funny, it has gotten me back into participating with the blogosphere … the ad hoc nature and the instant stream of updates has me bouncing around like I haven’t in quite some time. A lot of my twitter friends are sending quick thoughts with links that are pushing me all over the place. It is fun, but is addicting at an alarming level.

By: Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough)

Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:35:24 +0000

Oh yeah… and it’s a permission thing too… if I don’t want you to be part of my network, or more importantly, be *seen* to be part of my network since that is perceived as a form of recommendation, I can reject your invitation.

On Twitter, however, there is nothing to stop me from being your friend, whether you want me to or not – http://twitter.com/seanfitz/with_friends :-)

By: Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough)

Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:04:06 +0000

From what I can work out the reason LinkedIn gets you to fill out an intended contact’s email as opposed to one-click friending like flickr and other services is to reduce the chances of being spammed by people who want to contact every influential individual they think can help them get a leg up.

It’s not foolproof, especially when people like you and I have our emails publicly on the web, but they want to know that people have at least made an attempt to find their intended contact’s email.

And there would be some more circumspect individuals who haven’t released their email publicly, so for them it would probably work quite well as a privacy feature.