Raible Designs

RE: Are people blogging less?

James Strachan asks Are people blogging less? Looking at my archives, I don't see a noticeable decline in the number of entries I'm writing. Granted, I don't blog nearly as much as I did in December 2002.

One interesting thing I've noticed though, is I don't read blogs much anymore. I open NetNewsWire about once a week. However, I don't think it's because of the Twitter effect. I think it's because I work in an office full of people now and I get my social interaction from them, rather than from blogs. I also think it's because I'm more interested in what's going on with LinkedIn and social networking competitors. Most of that news I get from LinkedIn News on the homepage.

If there really is a decline in blogging, it may be because of Twitter, but I think it's something bigger. I think it's folks realizing 1) it's summer and 2) you don't get a whole lot of satisfaction out of blogging - you get satisfaction in life from spending time with family and friends. So quit reading this blog and go read your kids a book or invite your friends to happy hour tomorrow. It's a beautiful time of year and it won't last forever.

Share on LinkedIn

This is a test to see if I can get the Share on LinkedIn widget working on this site. Click below to invoke.

Share on LinkedIn

Seems to work pretty well. I like how you can select text and it'll automatically populate the summary. You can drag the link above to your toolbar in Safari and Firefox if you want to use it like a favelet.

Now I just need to get one of the designers to create a nifty little "Share on LinkedIn" icon so I can add it to all my entries by default.

Why no more than 500 connections?

I recently updated my status on LinkedIn to read:

Matt is determined not to have 500+ connections. Will start removing connections soon.

A couple of days later, I received the following message from a connection:

I noticed the other day you mentioned that you are determined to not have over 500 LinkedIn connections. I'm wondering what the reason is? Not just because LinkedIn shows 500+ after that, is it? As you work for LinkedIn, I assume there's some other reason. I'm interested to know what it is...

I joined LinkedIn May 27, 2003, 22 days after it initially launched. For the first few years, I accepted invitations when I received them. Some folks I knew, some I didn't. When I started consulting for LinkedIn last summer, I had somewhere between 200 and 300 connections. Most of them were people who had contacted me, not folks I had contacted.

One day, I used the import webmail contacts feature to pull in my contacts from Gmail. My number of connections quickly jumped by 100 and it's increased quite a bit since then (mostly due to co-workers from LinkedIn). Of the almost 500 connections I have, I believe there's a good 100-200 of them that are folks I don't know, have never had contact with, and will likely never benefit from being "connected" with.

I guess the main reason I'm planning on trimming my connections is to make my network higher quality. I admit I'm somewhat motivated by the 500+ icon, but it's also a genuine feeling that there's quite a few folks I won't benefit from being connected to. I'm not a LION after all. I believe my LinkedIn network should resemble my real-world network.

What's your opinion? Should I have folks in my network that know me, but I don't know them?