Thursday, November 24, 2011

Social Landing Page

I regularly get friend requests for LinkedIn and Facebook (I'm still dabbling with Google+).  One thing that neither of these sites have is a "landing page".  I'd like to have a web presence that lets me state my rules of accepting their connection.  Of course, none of these sites offer this because the strong social pressure to accept all links is part of the reason that they have grown as successfully as they have.  The fact that there is no good way of rejecting someone, other than ignoring them, is great for Facebook, but bad for me.

So - this posting is meant to resolve this.  I am being very selective on my social networking, and I have been since starting on LinkedIn.  In order to connect with you I'd like to know you well enough to ask a favor of you.  At a minimum this means that we have to have met.  Most likely it means that we have had a conversation long enough so that in six months I can contact you and remember exactly the context in which we met.

Since I use LinkedIn mostly as a means of being introduced to people, if I don't have a strong connection to my primary links, I find I have no social capital to ask for introductions to their links, and so the primary link is pointless.  Therefore, this isn't a beauty contest of who is "worthy" to be connected to me; it's just that, if I don't accept your invitation, I don't feel worthy of asking you for favors in the future.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Gates Notes

Bill Gates had a really good writeup on the need for energy storage and what we're doing at Energy Cache.  Check it out.