To Tart or Not to Tart?

I've got 494 connections on LinkedIn, the question is do I push on to get to the 500 and then be listed as 500+ connections and thereafter, run the risk of being viewed by people who think I'm connections tart? Or do I hold back and even disconnect from those people I don't truly know well and maintain at least a thin veil of respectability?

I think I must credit Martin Lewis with his excellent money-saving-expert website for coining the phrase "tart". He talks about a rate tart, being someone who continuously shops around for the interest-free offers from credit card companies or similarly is continually searching for the best rate from utilities companies, whose prices continue to head north at an alarming rate.

But try as I might, I can't find any advice on his website about LinkedIn connections or whether my friends and truly valued “close" connections will think I've become a bit "tarty" if I exceed 500 connections.

I attended an excellent course delivered by Lancaster University on the very subject of business network connections. They talked with great authority about the fact that some people will have a small network but with incredibly strong connections. So they are only “connected" to small group, but everyone in the group, would gladly go the extra mile for their connected friend. The alternative of course is someone who has a large network, but with very loose connections, in truth not really a number of connections, more acquaintances.

This is what I fear my network has become.

When considering some of my own connections, I have to admit that the only way we are connected is that we read each other's profile and clicked connect.

Oh dear, very loose, very tarty.

Having said that, when we read each other's profile, we evidently found something of interest, some common ground, some aspect of each other's public profile that inspired a click. (Speaking as a vendor of software, that helps you share files online, believe me, a click can be very prized and sometimes very difficult to obtain!)

So maybe I shouldn't worry too much if I wouldn't recognise a connections’ name, or I that I probably wouldn't recognise their face if I were to see them in the real world. Because we evidently do have something in common, some shared interest, some common ground because, after all we are connected on LinkedIn!

The end justifies the means, cyberspace, or cyber connectivity, social media call it what you will has delivered to us a methodology of achieving a large number of loose connections quickly and easily, and most people in business see the benefit of this. Yes, we might not know our connections well but we can at the very least read their profiles their endorsements, our shared connections and build an initial picture of who this person is and why we might want to do business with them. The Internet is the fuel for these connections and long may it continue.

But what of the old ways, when people only connected via social events, in bars, restaurants or at functions. I’m reminded of a comment from a friend when asked if he was related to the person he was talking to,  “only through drink” he replied. 

Colin Barnes as the CEO of Collabor8online, an  application that allows you to share files online.  Colin has been providing business software solutions for over 30 years and has 494 connections on LinkedIn!