There is one thing that’s very hard to do with LinkedIn – to socialize enough in order to meet with a potential business partner or even employer. This is due to two main reasons: 1. restrictions that have been put in there by LinkedIn and 2. the professionalism associated with LinkedIn. People can arrange to meet very easily from other social sites but that is quite a hard nut to crack on LinkedIn – but it is LinkedIn that offers us the opportunity to meet people who really matter as far as business development and career opportunities are concerned.
It’s not just meeting that is hard, but just getting connected to the person you really need to get connected with. Let’s take an example of a business idea you want to discuss with person X. However, you don’t have direct acquaintances with X but you decide to search for his/her (hereafter referred to as her) profile on LinkedIn anyway. You find her profile but attempts to connect with her as colleague or Other are not easy as LinkedIn wants you to supply some info that you don’t have.
Since it is a professional connection that you seek, you don’t want to send the request to connect as a friend…so your best bet is to allow LinkedIn to suggest people in your connections to connect the two of you…and then you realize that the only person who can initiate the connection is one of the strangers in your connections that has a friend that has a of a friend that has a friend that has a direct connection with X. “Pardon me. You don’t know me. And I don’t know her. Can you introduce us?” asks Business Insider. So you decide to give up just I have done on several occasions.
Two computer scientists also think that a stranger introducing a stranger to another stranger is a bit too weird. They have worked on a programme that they think is smarter and is able to get you the connection faster and at a more personal level, and their trick is to use your email address book in a platform they have dubbed conspire as reported by Business Insider.
Conspire uses your own email account as the basis for a game of Six Degrees of Separation. Sign up, and it analyzes your email. Then enter the name of the person you want to search and it finds someone in your contact list to introduce you, examining that person’s social media connections. It may even find multiple people to help introduce you. Then it will recommend the best choice.
Back to our person X story. What conspire will do different from LinkedIn is that you will visit Conspire Website (or App), create an Account or sign in with an existing Account e.g. Google Account, allow it to ‘manage’ your email plus the address book, and once you have created the Account you’ll be allowed to search for Person X by typing in her names in the search box. Conspire will then analyze Person’s X online profiles, her address book, and in conjunction with analyzing your address book it will establish the link between the two of you.
Conspire will then go ahead and suggest to you the appropriate links starting from the first person in your address book (who could be a stranger anyway), to a person in his address book…to person X. The links are up to six degrees and so I ask, “Pardon me. You don’t know me. And I don’t know her. Can you introduce us?”
