“Andy, please add me to your LinkedIn Network.”
—An email subject line that consistently gets my attention. Who from? Did I speak with this person somewhere? “Ah, yes, I remember Steve.” I recall. “Met him at a business function last week. Nice guy. Sales trainer, I think . . . Sure! I’m honored. Thanks for reaching out.” Accept, click, connect. Next email . . .
Then the trouble started. Not immediately, but about a week later, Steve’s activity began scrolling into my LinkedIn newsfeed. Not in one’s, two’s, and three’s, but in torrents. It seemed that Steve’s posts filled over 50% of my newsfeed, some detailing where he was, or where he was going. Most were saturated with hashtags. At times, only a paltry sprinkle of non-Steve posts managed to puncture this scrolling billboard of Steve’s business life. Had Steve snuck in something truly useful, I never would have known. I had already conditioned myself to skim over this noise.
On Wednesday, I counted 19 posts, and last night, almost as many. I had enough. I disconnected from Steve—or in LinkedIn-speak, removed the connection. A fast flame-out: three weeks from “Sure! I’m honored. Thanks for reaching out,” to “who needs this?” Not a social-media-let’s-connect-online success story. All from a combination of unbridled enthusiasm, unrestrained sharing, and a lack of empathy. Still, a pang of doubt: maybe my expectations are too high. Whatever. Enough is enough.
“I should at least let Steve know,” I thought. So I sent him an email:
“Hi Steve: I removed your LinkedIn connection today because you had so many posts going to my newsfeed. One day alone I counted 19. Since I don’t know of a way to filter them, this was the only way I know to reduce the traffic.
I do value you as a connection, and would prefer to maintain the connection. But the amount of postings has created problems for me as I must scroll through so many every day, and this is now quite time consuming for me. If you can ratchet your postings back to a smaller number, that would be great. Otherwise, I understand – it just doesn’t work for the way I use LinkedIn.”
Steve replied thanking me for bringing the problem to his attention. Fair enough. He shouldn’t change his tactics if they’re working for him.
Since sending my email, I did a little research and found a useful article, Filter Your LinkedIn Newsfeed to Save Your Time and Sanity. (Home run! Who said article titles don’t matter?) The article describes how to filter stuff like “Joe S. was endorsed by Prashant M. for Management.” I can get through the day without knowing that—but that’s me.
But it also explains that by simply hovering over a certain post, you can elect to hide all content from the individual who posted it. Now I remember! I immediately checked my Hidden Connections tab, and found one—one!–person from my network, who I must have hidden many years ago for who knows why. LinkedIn offers no field to document transgressions—a good feature for the next release.
Quirky things, these social networks. We can maintain “connections” (I can’t express this any other way than in quotes) who we don’t want to hear from. Go figure. As for me, I want to hear from my connections. But can you turn down the volume from shrill shouting to just a dull roar?
