Tag Archives: LinkedIn

The Cost of Reconnecting

I’ve been slow to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but one that I’ve been enjoying great success with is LinkedIn. I’ve been able to reconnect with people I haven’t had contact with for years. One person in particular I’ve been trying to find for several years. They’re the sort to keep a low profile – unlisted phone number, nothing returned when Googling them, etc – so when I did my periodic search on LinkedIn, I was excited to see their name pop up. The only problem, though, is that while we’ve been friends since high school, we share no post-secondary educational institutions, and we’ve never worked together. Of the remaining catagories in LinkedIn’s “Invite this person to your network”, they require an email address. I understand why they do this (I don’t like spam as much as the next person), but now I seem to be stuck.

Almost, anyway. I have a free LinkedIn account, so to send messages within their system, I either need to upgrade to a paid account (the cheapest is $20.00 per month), or order an “InMail” a la carte, at $10 per message. So yesterday I paid my $10, and sent my message. Totally worth it, and will be even more so when he responds!

Update: I just got email from him, so I’m calling this unqualified success!  Money well spent.