Inviting under the radar

I'm not sure if it's anything to do with limits imposed on the number of invitations you can send, or maybe just because LinkedIn have started to come down on mass-invites, but I've noticed the following trend...

Rather than an invite being sent through LinkedIn, people have been sending me an email asking me to invite them or confirm I'm open to an invitation and then they'll invite me.

This is an interesting development as it gets around the accusation of using LinkedIn to SPAM, and therefore risking having your account suspended. Plus, you can't get declined or reported because you're not actually sending an invitation.

Using this method for blanket emails could still evoke LinkedIn's wrath if an accusation of SPAM gets back to them (I've noticed some people are doing this with emails taken from the LinkedIn LIONS group, all of whom are supposed to be "open" to receive unsolicited invitations) but, as a way of inviting people with their email address in their header it's a good strategy. Plus, it allows you to develop a dialogue outside of LinkedIn and, therefore, you're only inviting people that you already know.

Hey, we're getting close to LinkedIn's User Agreement here...careful now ;-)

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