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.