Why is managing contacts and friends such a pain, or is it just me

I'm doing a day of catch-up work on email, blogs and also Linked In, Facebook and of course Forum Oxford.

And those darn invitations at Linked In (and even worse, Facebook) are such a PAIN to manage. (I don't mean that you should not connect with me, I do believe in, and want to support these virtual contacts, BUT) I don't want to accept every random connection-hog invitation by someone with 500+ links on Linked In, who sends me a standard invitation and clearly isn't even working in my industry. (Oh, anyone who links in with me and says they read the blog, is an automatic acceptance - of course, ha-ah)

But equally, there are the random contacts from someone who attended one of my workshops, who perhaps does not speak English very well, and is very shy about contacting me, and has perhaps 15 links and kind of is a newcomer to Linked In. Every time I have to click on the invitation, read the invite, then click on the person's page to see who they are and what their company does (and how many links they have, I am very skeptical of all contacts who have 500 or more links)... Oh, and Facebook is even worse. Once I leave the contact invitations page - there is no link back to it (that I've found). So its a hideous hassle to do serious consideration of Facebook link contacts.

Is this just me or is this way too much of a hassle to handle new invitations properly. Maybe I'm getting too old for this industry ha-ha..

Comments

[Jonathan Marks]

I confess to having amassed 500+ contacts on LinkedIn but that was partly my fault of linking it to a business contacts database in Outlook and it took time to build up those contacts. Would I miss LinkedIn or Facebook if they went away? Probably not. But I have had some value from both. What scares me in now we're seeing Plaxo and Linkedin and Twitter talking to each other. That's when it gets really complicated.

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Jonathan

I don't deny the benefits (well, of Linked In especially - the connections of a random business contact and their recommendations even more so, although to me Facebook is really more play than work). But its the darn management of those contacts and then someone sends you a message on Linked In, and its been waiting there for five weeks already - who goes to Linked In every day? - and I always tell them lets move the discussion to regular email.. Again, Facebook is barely better..

Oh, and I haven't done my Forum Oxford "work" for today even, yet. And I'm nowhere near my target at my emails.. I hate these "email days".. :-)

Thanks for sharing my pain, Jonathan

Tomi :-)

[LunaRossa]

I read your blog, I work in the mobile industry, and I am of the kind that would never dare to contact you in Facebook so you yould not have to read my ridiculous status updates...i think it's cleaner if we leave LinkedIn for work and facebook for fun, even though half of my connections in FB are from the Spanish mobile industry, but they're also my friends!

[Leena Helttula]

Greetings from Finland!
Tomi, you should be happy that you are so famous that people want to add you. I know how you feel since even I get those friend requests where I have no clue who the person is in case we have no friends in common.
I have been on Twitter for a while and some people are compeating getting followers. I have to admit I have a hard time managing all my friends around different platforms and I have relatively few of them.
The sad thing regarding my friends is that I have only foreign friends of my age and all the Finnish are the age of my children! I don't admit that I am too old for this though :)
Probably I have too few friends since Facebook keeps suggesting them to me. All the suggestions are people living less than 10 miles from where I live. Honestly, if I would like to add those friends it would probably be easier to meet them in person!