Social Networks and Trust

I’ve been using social networking sites like LinkedIn for a number of years now. I’ve found it to be a nice way to keep in touch with past professional acquaintances. I usually add people that I’ve met professionally to my LinkedIn contacts without too much concern but a recent event forced me to think a bit about who I add to my lists and why.

For me, the people who appear on my LinkedIn contacts are simply people that I’ve met either through work, conferences, etc. Usually I only invite or accept invitations from people that I have had a chance to converse with or have had some level of interaction (although a few contact whores have squeeked in). This lets me have some level of ‘trust’ in my list.

That being said, I do also have levels of trust that cannot adequately be expressed (nor would I want it captured) in my contacts list. The expression of these levels of trust usually manifest as a recommendation that I write on that persons behalf. I would hope that persons looking over my contacts list would communicate with me prior to any assumptions on the attributes of anyone that they would deal with rather than just trusting that since ‘I‘ knew them that I must ‘trust‘ them. After all, diligence is an active effort and not a passive one.

Recently I invited a co-worker as a contact and was politely told that they wanted some more time to get to know me more before they added me to their list. I accepted this gracefully as I can fully understand that each person has their own methods of establishing trust and confidence. However that made me rethink how I was doing things and therefore this post. There’s nothing wrong with my co-workers approach, and certainly if you’re not interested in building a huge network of low relative trust, then their method ensures a higher ‘quality’ in their list. Certainly an interesting approach and one worth considering.