Learn To Use The Connections That Are Online Correctly, Please!

Here is my beef. Yes, I want to connect with more on LinkedIn and Twitter, but the problem is I don’t know you and using just the friend connection click is not enough. When I find someone I want to connect with on LinkedIn or Twitter, I first go out and look at their profile and find a commonality between us. Then I go to their web site and check out what that person does and what we have in common.

From that simple research, when I click us to be friends, I can now add why we should be and what we have in common. People, it is just that simple. Not a lot of work. And by the way, if you want me to connect with you, I need to know that you do research. Connecting just to add up and compete with others and their numbers is not my style. I don’t want 500+ friends; I want only those who I can do business with. Remember, it is a business connection, not a party.

So I am warning you right now, if you send me an invite to join you on LinkedIn or Twitter and you don’t tell me why we should be friends with a little more detail showing me you did some research, I will simply click the ignore button. Sorry to say, that is how I feel about it. This is post number two on this network/connection thing. Is anybody out there listening?

Hear Yee! Hear Yee!

Hear is my announcement. GET A LIFE PEOPLE! Okay, maybe I shouldn’t shout it to you. But my problem is all the e-mails I get to join one Internet social site after another. Give me a break please.

I am having a real problem here understanding when all of you out there have time for such lollygagging. Me, I work 15 hours a week writing display information at a museum. I teach writing workshops each week, including Saturdays. I go to gradate school at night twice a week, with three thesis papers to write for one class and a quiz every week in the other one. I tutor two children twice a week. I write as a freelance writer so I am always looking for work and at this time I am finishing my third book to take to market. I also write for web sites like ehow.com and helium.com that brings me passive income. So you tell me, when would I have time to be on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and any other social Internet web site. And I would like to ask you, when do you work?

I am not trying to be unsociable here, just wondering when and how do you make a living? As I said, I work. The other thing that bothers me is, do you ever talk face to face? As a believer in communication, I find it rather hard to see how anyone can say they communicate with many others when they spend more time on their computer instead of looking into the eyes, listening to the words out of the mouth, watching facial expressions and body movements, one on one. Without them to me, you miss out on more detail communication.

Yes, the social web sites are one way to network but it is not the only way. When you are out into the world, you meet, shake hands, hold conversations, monitor the body and can see whether or not the individual is for real. That is not what you can do on the Internet. Sure on places like You Tube, you can see the person but, they set it up for what they want you to see, not what is a natural reaction to words and movements. Remember it is acting.

Now maybe you can explain to me why it is necessary to join all of the web sites I mentioned before? Do you make any money on them? Do they get you hooked up with the right people to make money? If you are a writer, do you get writing jobs from them? I ask that question because most of the invites are from other writers. Anyway, if you got a good response to my question, feel free to comment. I really want to know. Convince me if you think you can.