Linked In or Locked Out

A pop-up message on my computer at work recommended that I refresh and review my profile on one of those internet networking sites targeted at business people.

I think that I did intentionally join one after attending a seminar on "How to effectively market your business without spending any money" or something along those lines that cost £600 a day with a finger buffet , a free pen and faux leather clipboard.

The concept of the site is to form a spiders web of links with those you have done business with and by doing so you have access to their respective contacts.

In a nice way I liken this to how Attilla the Hun would have created his involuntary family tree whilst rampaging through his territories and encroaching upon those of his neighbours and a lot of the known continents of Europe and Asia.

For example, I have done some work for an individual within my sphere of activity. They themselves work in a different but overlapping sphere of business and provide consultancy services to a broad range of other businesses.

As you can see the tentacles of the network spread rapidly and before long I am linked to hundreds of people that I have no knowledge of, no possibility of ever working with and frankly, we have nothing in common or any skills or abilities that could be of any possible current or any combination of future circumstances, apart from bunker buddies in the event of an apocalyptic event.

Yes, that fearful scenario would make complete sense of an expansive network of human contacts able to provide a specialised input from disaster management, stock taking, heating and ventilation, sourcing and water coolers through to medical and psychological care, health planning, a personal trainer and a manicurist.(The latter may seem a bit frivolous for a subterranean form of existence but remember, it may be necessary to claw your way out and back to the surface at some stage so, in my reckoning, strong healthy finger nails would be important).

You would not think that a simple, single keyboard key operation to refresh said network would cause so much trouble. I had pushed the button on leaving my office one evening. In the morning my e mail inbox had a few hundred responses from my extended and largely estranged business family. Surprisingly, but if I ever considered re-training for another line of work, my convoluted connections with dentists, doctors, trainee lawyers and accountants consisted of auto messages of "Absent from office for two weeks", This strongly suggested to me that these were good income earning possibilities and the recipients of my reminder were all off holidaying in Bali, Gstaad or North Wales.

A few replies expressed annoyance in a polite business-speak way and a further number, the most enterprising or desperate were already trying to sell me something.

I had to be ruthless myself in filtering out those contacts who were in no way known to me. The single key stroke process made this easier and I thank the website designer for this innovation. He or she was obviously a firm believer that there was no place for sentiment in their perception of proper business.

This did evoke some upset amongst those I dispossessed of a link and I do find this understandable because business is about people at its heart.

I apologise to those who experienced the disappointment of losing me, someone they never knew existed or would ever meet, shake hands with, perhaps slap on the back or playfully rib about last years profit levels or what is the most cost effective photocopier/scanner/printer for a small to medium enterprise.