Scantlings

I regularly receive invites from people I know to join LinkedIn.

Not really keen to join more sites, and definitely not keen to have more work.

Anyone here find it useful, and why?

Olaf Hart wrote:I regularly receive invites from people I know to join LinkedIn.

Not really keen to join more sites, and definitely not keen to have more work.

Anyone here find it useful, and why?

I check in there about once a week to see if there's anything useful. I only do this because a number of the more mature (to be polite) folks I work with use it rather than Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and a host of other things that are more focused on the younger set. LinkedIn has been attempting to become a central clearing house for business contacts for years, and (in my opinion) doing a very poor job of it. I rarely get anything out of LinkedIn other than occasionally long lost friends will find me because "Beau Vrolyk" is such an odd name. The same thing is true of Google+ and a number of other places like this, where I am also a member for the same reason. They are all chasing the really successful social networking sites and loosing ground.

Often someone new to LinkedIn will not "un-check" the box on letting them have access to their address book, and fail to un-check the box that says it's OK to tell everyone that this person has just joined LinkedIn. I believe this may be the source of most of your "invitations", which are often entirely unknown to the person who is supposedly "inviting" you.

I'm with Beau. I use it and one of the 500+ contacts members but rarely get anything out of it. Maybe connecting with lost contacts and occasionally hooking up 2 contacts who don't know each other but have a common business need.

I signed up once when I was job hunting. Hasn't been that useful, but the "people you may know" feature is fascinating.

While a long-lost sailor friend actually tracked me down via LinkedIn, I find it to be an incredible Spam magnet... can't tell how many emails I get at work saying "Hi, I notice you are an xyz responsible for... "

I really need to get rid of this xyz title

Several people I know and actually like tracked me down, asked to be on my contact list, and I never heard from them again. Whats the point of that?

I like Linkedin. I'm selective about who I add to my contacts. These are people I know professionally. While it may seem as though you rarely use it, it only takes one great connection to take your career in a new direction if that's something you'd be looking for.