On Ecademy there's a club called Attention as a product. run by Ronald Wopereis. Over on the other side of the world, Steve Gilmor is involved in attention.xml. So Ronald sends me a Linkedin request to put them in touch. Except that the only way for me to do that is via Jason Calacanis. Now I don't Jason well, and I don't know Steve at all. And passing this request reflects on me and I don't think I want to become known to these sort of people as someone who blindly forwards LinkedIn requests. Now since attention.xml has a wiki, probably has a mailing list, and Steve probably has contact details available on the web, it would make far more sense for Ronald to just call him direct like we always used to. I reckon this whole 6 degrees thing for deliberate networking is a load of old rubbish. It's an interesting statistical analysis but it's not actually useful. We all say "Could you introduce me to X": A-B-X. We sometimes say "Do you know anyone who could introduce me to X" A-B-C-X. but IRL we never say "Do you know someone who knows someone who could introduce me to X": A-B-C-D-X. The big problem with this and with higher orders is that C has no skin in the game and doesn't know A or X. They're just a postman. Now maybe you like being a postman and have built a reputation for being one. But most people don't like this and are uncomfortable with it. |
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[ 04-Apr-05 7:43am ] [ YASN ]