Comments on: Invitations and the IDK Button

By: Khurt L Williams

Khurt L Williams — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:14:45 +0000

I personally like the current implementation of IDK. I receive a lot of connection request from individuals who work in the same company I do but with whom I have had little or no contact. I always reject these. I think that less senior employees are using these sort of request to name drop in interviews. I had a long time friend ( an IT director at a spa ) contact me recently about an applicant who had mentioned my name in an interview. I had never met this person and knew nothing about his work.

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:40:47 +0000

Well, not out completely… more like in the penalty box. Your account gets suspended — no invitations, no messages, etc. — and you get a message from LinkedIn asking you to agree to use the site as intended — to connect with people you know. And from then on you have to have people’s email addresses in order to invite them. They may make some exceptions on that last point — I’m not 100% sure.

By: Kay Stout

Kay Stout — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:48:00 +0000

Scott - - I didn’t know the 5 IDK limit. Is it like baseball — 3 strikes and you’re out. Only with LI it is 5?

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:05:56 +0000

@James: You’re exactly right about the need for some additional granularity. I think the one point I would make, though, is that while the name and function of the button are quite clear, the fact that it creates consequences for the sender is not. Only those people who either follow LinkedIn-related blogs and forums or who have personally been on the receiving end of the IDK penalty would know about it. And if they knew, they might at least be a little more thoughtful about checking to see whether they know the person or not. For example, before I IDK anyone, I always check their profile and search my email. I only IDK them if I don’t recognize any common ground, we’ve never corresponded, and they send a generic invitation.

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:02:13 +0000

@Michael: That is a challenge. The thing is, the two approaches definitely can coexist, in general. Whether or not they can peacefully coexist using the same tool, well, that’s another matter.

I do believe, though, that having some sort of relationship strength indicator and the associated functionality, e.g., showing the strength of a particular introduction path, would be extremely useful and go a long way toward resolving the issue.

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:59:01 +0000

@Pam: You’re exactly right. There is a disconnect between the fact that LinkedIn makes it easy for you to just invite pretty much everyone you’ve ever exchanged email with and then the 5-IDK limit.

I’ve had a couple of friends who did this, and even went through the list of contacts by hand and made sure they knew them all, and then still got 5 IDK’s (out of 1,000+ invitations).

I agree it’s a problem. I think the limit of 5 is too low, and I think it needs to be a sliding window.

But it also highlights the need to remind people how you know them as part of your invititation.

By: Scott Allen

Scott Allen — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:50:26 +0000

@Mikolaj: I agree. There should be some other option than “I don’t know” and “Archive”. The way the interface is currently designed, “I don’t know” is the default option other than “Accept”. And there are all kinds of reasons people might not want to accept other than “I don’t know…”. I wrote more about this on Why Can’t I Just Say “No” Any More?

Furthermore, I think the button needs to be moved farther away, so that you really have to make a conscious choice to say, “I don’t know.”

By: James Wood

James Wood — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:13:02 +0000

The button name and function are quite clear. I think the disconnect with those who are looking for a different way is granularity.

networks are trees. You have many branches, and many levels of acquaintance. I submit that a more granular management of contacts, at least to the contact list owner, would help this.
Being able to add them to close friends, work acquaintances, casual contacts, etc might give the invite system a whole new useful aspect.

By: Michael Szpilzinger

Michael Szpilzinger — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:38:45 +0000

Scott,

You know I have been going back and forth on this issue, ever since I heard Stan Relihan interview you and Chris Mayaud, founder of the LIONs. I have until now pretty much used LI a bit close to the vest as to my connections, with the exception of a couple of LIONs who I connected to. I am trying to understand whether the LION approach and LinkedIn’s value as a trusted biz connection tool can coexist without being watered down. I don’t know if I have fully made up my mind yet on this issue.

By: Pam

Pam — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:56:27 +0000

The point that is missing in this explanation is that LI markets the tools for us to load our Outlook contacts and invite them all. Then they resend the invites automatically. For anybody with an Outlook address book that goes back even a couple of years there are always going to be people who don’t remember them but should they be penalized for sending those invites? How could anybody know who is going to remember them unless they communicated with them very recently? I have become very careful with invites and no longer use the ones from my Outlook but even then I have had one person that emailed me only 2 days previous and they still said they didn’t know me!