One way for you to annoy your online networking contacts is to clutter sites like LinkedIn with duplicate (often outdated) profiles of yourself.
Wait…aren’t we already linked?
LinkedIn says I should link to you. Now I have to look it up…or invite you again…or was that on one of the other several sites where I have to maintain a profile? (What a pain.) Ah…I am linked to you already…how unprofessional this makes you look. But maybe it’s not all your fault.
LinkedIn won’t do it for you
LI’s valuation is based on their user base. They now boast 55+ million users. I bet you can safely lop off 10% as bad profiles. (Another 15% are probably single-contact profiles, which is okay…users have to start somewhere.)
LinkedIn should guard their integrity by aggressively merging/deleting duplicates and requiring indentity checks on famous folks.
Is Kevin Bacon really on LinkedIn?
Three times? Some of my contacts are linked to him/it/whoever…I could create any fake profile, as is popular on MySpace, and nobody would know the difference.
Probably easier for them to clean the junk up as they go along, rather than wait til later. Do the right thing, LI.
Better for you to delete your duplicates sooner rather than later, too. At least you won’t have to give up millions of dollars to do so.
Posted by Jay F. Rowland 
