Just before Digital London back in March 2012 I was interviewed by Adam Malik, the Founder of the Show. We discussed the value of your network connections on the various public networks (e.g. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc).
One of the key points that Adam was making to me is that you should let anyone follow you. My view is why would you do this? Your network is your life! You don’t let everyone access to your personal address book, and also content, information etc that you create.
On Linkedin, once you let individuals connect to you, they can see everyone you’re connected to. Do you want anyone connected to you to see everyone connected to you? If Linkedin had a facility like Google+ to segregate your contacts into Circle, then I would. However, this is not possible. I’m not forgetting that community is always and important but only for people I trust, or who trust me, but community is only valuable if you curate it to make it useful. Noise (from the perspective of irrelevant contacts) is something I think is important to manage!
Watch the video below for a short debate on the subject. Let me know your views in the comment box below.