BLOG by zaiss

When you think about the process of networking, there seem to be two key phases: Making the connections, and keeping in touch with them. Sites that aim to support social networking come up with all sorts of ideas to innovate on the latter (profiles, groups, status, random music in the middle of the webpage -shudder-), but the former seems pretty straight forward. If person A wants to connect with person B, let person B know, and he/she can accept or decline.

Even Facebook, where there is (or, was) a concept of networks, adding a friend was still easy. Find them. Add them. Wait for a reply.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is slightly different. There are two ways to add a friend. If you don’t share a common background, adding your friend is as simple as sending the invite… if you know his/her current email address. Now, I only know the email addresses for about 3% of the people I knew in college. That’s not to say I wouldn’t want to network with them, especially on a professionally-oriented site like LinkedIn.

Good thing there’s Option B - Connect with former co-workers or classmates. No email address required, just a brief message (which can’t be blank) that will be surrounded by cheesy LinkedIn rhetoric:

I’m not sure anyone talks like that, but I digress. If you select Option B, you would think the standard notification process would start up. But… that’s not really the case. Sometimes you get an email, sometimes it shows up a week later, and sometimes not at all. There’s always a confirmation link on your LinkedIn homepage, but if you’re a member, you can attest to the fact that there are quite a few links on that page, so nothing really stands out from visit to visit.

So woe is me, who wants to connect with his friends. When I check my friend status, I’m greeted with this lovely message:

Thirteen unconfirmed invites is more than I’ve ever dealt with on Facebook, Friendster, or even MySpace, because they email the other person when you want to add them. LinkedIn’s “Reconnect” option seems to be a bit shadier, or at least not consistent.

Still, I suppose it makes sense on some level - if the only notification is on my homepage, who’s to say I’m going to visit my homepage frequently, if at all? Maybe my friends just need some more time to see the invitation. Here’s where the added complication comes in:

Apparently over time your invites expire. LinkedIn offers an explanation, and after reading it, I came away with two pieces of information:

1. After the invitation has expired, it’s withdrawn and can’t be replied to anymore.
2. You can click the “Reinvite” button to reactivate the invitation.

Now here’s the kicker - both of those statements are false. A friend of mine who was one of my “expired invitations” accepted my invitation just a week ago, so #1 can’t be right. And if you chose Option B above (to reconnect with coworkers or classmates) the “Reinvite” option isn’t open to you (notice that “Resend” is plain text and not a link in the above image). It seems like for something so cryptic, a bit of fact checking is in order.

Wow, did I really talk that much about the invite process on LinkedIn? A bit overboard? Not at all. It just proves my point - LinkedIn is making the connection process too complex. Really, it doesn’t need to be so difficult. No special rules. No cryptic invite states. Just send an email to the recipient, and let the recipient approve or deny. Easy.