Dear Occupant, I Value Our Relationship…..

I got this piece of LinkedIn Spam: 

Hello ,

 I’d like to connect to you to on my professional network on LinkedIn. I am a LinkedIn LION with over 4,500+ connections currently. I would be happy to connect so that we can mutually expand our network of potential contacts. Unfortunately LinkedIn has restricted the number of invitations I am able to send, so I am pushed to expand this way.   My profile is at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/Mr. X   If you are unable to open the above link just go to people search and put Mr. X.  Please feel free to send an invitation, I will always accept.   Send an invitation to: Mr. X@gmail.com     If you are not an open networker, I do apologize for this inconvenience.               If we are already connected, then ignore this mail.        All the best,  Mr. X

Don’t these deeply personal invitations to connect just warm your heart?  Doesn’t it make you feel good about the power of social networking?  Don’t you feel that your connection with this individual really means something  (Particularly, if you are already connected and are receiving this email).

When will people realize, social networking is about relationships, not quantity?  Yes, many of the relationships will be distant relationships, but are we just accumulating mailing lists (I think a lot of these people are and just feeding their spam machines)?

I like LinkedIn, it’s a valuable tool.  The value of the tool declines, when idiots like this start intruding on my time.