I was accused of spamming by one of my LinkedIn connections. My first instinct was to tell him he’s a douche bag and remove him as a connection. My second instinct was to argue the point. My third instinct was to ask for clarification. My fourth instinct was to tell him he’s a douche bag, argue the point and remove him as a connection.

Here’s the thing. Sharing is all about timing and targeting. Get either of them wrong and suddenly you’re a spammer. If what you’re sharing isn’t relevant to the person you’re sending it to, or even just not relevant at that moment, you may get a snarky response like this:

“David, this LinkedIn spam is killing me. Please stop.”

WTF? as the kids like to say. I write lots of articles and share them to groups. All of a non-promotional and marketing-related nature. Occasionally, like once every couple of months, I’ll send a link to my LinkedIn connections in marketing.

The typical responses I get go from “nice read, thanks,” to “do you have time for a chat?” to nothing at all.

To hear Mr. D-Bag tell it, there are hoards of angry LinkedIn connections all mobbed up with torches and pitchforks just waiting to tell me how horrible I’ve been to them.

Then where are they? Do they just endure my overbearing message every two months.

“Hi, I thought you might enjoy this… LINK”

Now that I see it in print, in the light of day, maybe they’re right. Every couple of months they’re forced to see a message from me in their inbox, and choose whether to click on it or delete it. I’m the douche! It’s so clear.

When you send someone a message on LinkedIn, they get an email. That’s it. One email. My stance is, if you can’t reach out to your connections, friends, followers once in awhile then what good is it having them in the first place?

Why are people like this even on social networks… so they can creep on each others’ thumbnail photos and see who checked out their photos? LinkedIn isn’t a dating site kids, it’s a social networking site… for business.

So I have to wonder, am I F’d up or is the person I’m sending to F’d up.

I settled on asking for clarification, knowing full well that none would be forthcoming, and with no reply after a day, promptly disconnected from the guy.

Will I send this out to all my LinkedIn connections? What do you think?