I don't do a great deal of this new-fangled "social networking" - my boys are keen exponents, Facebooking, Myspacing and Twittering until the cows come home, but it's passed me by. However, recently I've started getting invites to join a thing called "LinkedIn"- I thought it was just spam to start with, but apparently not, it turns out to be a legitimate website which allows you to "Control your professional identity online... Find the people & knowledge you need to achieve your goals". You sign up, tell them who you are, then invite everybody you've ever met to join as well.
All of this looks like harmless fun, allowing "networking professionals" to get together and tell each other how big their mortgages are and why they want a different job. What's more of a problem is that LinkedIn - presumably in a desperate quest for new members - sends the invitation email repeatedly, reminding me that I haven't joined up yet and that John Smith is still desperate to network with me. It recently got to the stage where I was receiving several a week, often from the same person - it was a bit like being shouted at by somebody with a megaphone in a room with a bad echo. I tried to unsubscribe, which didn't work, so finally had to set up our spam filter to kill everything from the site.
To be honest I'm not sure there's a person working in the country today less qualified than me to be called a networking professional. If you've invited me to join the club and not had a reply, my apologies - however if you really do think I have "knowledge which will help you achieve your goals" then you have either gravely overestimated my abilities or possibly need some more challenging goals.
