I’m in a mess with LinkedIn – what do you advise?

Last year I wrote an ebook on social media for business.  In it I outlined what I thought the rules should be for connecting to people on LinkedIn.  These are that they should be people who

–          You do business with

–          You would have a drink with after a meeting

–          You would recommend to a trusted client

A lot of people see social media as a numbers game – and in the book I argued that I had not definitely made up my mind, but I was of the view that for most businesses it will be about quality and really rating your connections.

Yesterday I wondered if I have this all wrong.  Apparently I have offended someone because I said (I thought very nicely) that I didn’t know him in business – but hoped one day I would.

There was no slur on him as an individual or his credibility – I’m just following the rules created for my LinkedIn account.

But is this still right?  Have things moved on so far that now we are expected to accept anyone, regardless of whether we know them enough to recommend them?

At the moment I have about 50 invitations pending – and most of them I have no idea what to do with.  I’ve got rid of the spam, these are people where I know the networks they are in, they might belong to the same group as me or we are connected to a number of mutual contacts.

I have already been frumpy in saying that I only want to accept invitations where someone has bothered to do a personal note to me.  And only two or three of my pending invitations have anything remotely personalised about the message.

What are you doing?  And should I accept all invitations where I sort of know who they are?