Why I have not accepted your connection request -
Connections are for people I know and trust.

If you are reading this page, I have most likely declined your connection request on a social (business) network.

Let me explain why I did so.

At one point I found my LinkedIn stream to be flooded with updates from people I don’t really know. I’ve realized that this has made it difficult to locate specific people in my contacts and use LinkedIn how I would like to—as a way to stay in touch with and quickly communicate with genuine professional contacts. Instead my LinkedIn network got overwhelmed with people I’ve never met and people who have not even shared one quick sentence about themselves while connecting.

I accept the blame here— I continued accepting connection requests from folks I didn’t know.

But I have decided to correct this mistake moving forward.

That’s why I switched my default profile action to “Follow” to make it easier for folks to still get notified once I publish new content without flooding my address book or contact list.

If I know and trust the person asking, I’m happy to accept their request.
But if we’ve never done business together and don’t have any other relationship, I’m declining these requests to maintain the value I want to get out of a social network.

I’d encourage you to “follow” me to stay up to date on my latest news and content. And if at some point we do get the chance to work together, don't hesitate to reach out with a connection request again. Just make sure you take a moment to share how we know each other! 

Thank you for your understanding,

Petra