Great points. I suppose what I did a poor job of emphasizing (after reading your comment) was that networking beyond LinkedIn and trying to establish relations

Great points. I suppose what I did a poor job of emphasizing (after reading your comment) was that networking beyond LinkedIn and trying to establish relationships. Perhaps I'm a bit more cold about who I connect with on LinkedIn, because in a way I see it as an extension of my social consciousness when people can just reach out and ask to join that circle. And that's not to call myself old fashioned or lash out against the worthiness of something like a digital Rolodex; what I am saying however is that if it's worth your time to go through and connect with people on LinkedIn, it should also be worth your time to find out if these are the people you can derive some sort of social bounty from as well. Needlessly padding your connections count is about as non-advantageous as needlessly padding your twitter count. However this opinion is purely relative, and contains large amounts of imperative perspective based on a few bad experiences.