Why Connecting With Obama Will Break Your LinkedIn

I’ve lauded Senator Obama and the Obama campaign for being aggressive social media participants (adopters) in many posts on this blog. And there’s nothing wrong with a national figure having a profile on LinkedIn, whether or not it’s maintained and established by a handler/assistant.

But I will not connect with Barack Obama on LinkedIn. The reason is simple. On LinkedIn.com:

Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

LinkedIn shows you results based on how closely related you are to others based on your connections on the network. So if you connect with Obama, suddenly you are a 2nd connection from any of the hundreds (thousands?) of users connected to him. Because you and these 2nd connections likely aren’t 2 degrees separated — other than the fact that you both wanted to connect with Obama — your LinkedIn experience (should you truly use it as the networking tool that it is) will be severely diluted.

Restrain yourself and just stick to the Obama ’08 LinkedIn group if you feel the need to connect. Then again… if Obama chooses his Attorney General from within his LinkedIn pool, my argument is moot.

Postscript: on the eve of the election the Obama campaign released the below video, outlining his technology and industrial policies.

2 Replies to “Why Connecting With Obama Will Break Your LinkedIn”

  1. It seems jobs is the largest part of this election. Linkedin was included into the About.com Top 10 employment site list…linkedin is still the only social network on the list though…..the newest 3 on the list are-

    http://www.linkedin.com (professional networking)
    http://www.indeed.com (aggregated listings)
    http://www.realmatch.com (matches you to the perfect job)

    Complete top 10 job site list here:
    http://jobsearch.about.com/od/joblistings/tp/jo

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