Whenever someone asks to connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter I try my darnedest to find out who they are really before clicking the accept or follow button. On Facebook I look at their posts, groups they belong to, mutual friends, and photos. If a majority of what I find doesn’t fit with who I am, shared common interests then more than likely I won’t connect with you. I use the same process with Facebook users who are looking to join the group that I own and administrate.
On LinkedIn my approach is basically the same. I may start out in a incognito window or cached window to view a brief of that persons profile. Then I’ll do a Google search on that person and see if there are some other areas to get some background on the person. I’ll look at the website, and other social networks, and if all looks good at this point I’ll view the profile logged into LinkedIn. If there are commonalities I’ll accept the invite.
With Twitter I read the person’s bio, check out the website, review the tweets and replies, and view others who are connected to me that follow this person.
In all three of these networks as of late, I have been using the “Search for this image on Google” option by right-clicking on the profile image in the Chrome browser. 90 percent of the time on Twitter as the spam account factor is 10 times worse than LinkedIn. On Twitter some use celebrity photos, stock photos or other people’s photos as their own profile image. The search image function works fantastically to find where else this picture has been used. Google’s algorithm for facial characteristics and colors is outstanding.
In the case of the screen shot above, it turned out this Twitter user is using the thumbnail image of actor Jeremy Irvine. Now that in and of itself is not immediately grounds for not following but combined with other factors may lead to not following.
The image search also enables me to find out if the person is using an alias (i.e. image is used with a different name from a valid source), and where else the image is being used.
Now you may be asking yourself why I’m a going to such great lengths to find out more about the people I connect with. Why not just blindly click the button? Because to me it’s not about the numbers of followers, likes, connections and group members. For me it is about the quality of the person, the value they provide, and the value that I can give.
Now my requests are moderate compared to some and it does take a few minutes for each person. For those who are getting requests by the dozens this validation process might become overwhelming, so may want to cut out a few steps but I suggest using the image search tool.
