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The CEO of a company I worked for did this by accident: Invited all of his contact. Let me tell you, all the underlings and vendors were so excited to get an invitation from the CEO. His linked in profile exploded. I was tasked with trying to uninvite the 500 or so people that hadn't accepted in the first few hours! I eventually told him it was no big deal. LinkedIn isn't very personal, it's mostly image.

[henrik_w]

For me it is personal. I mainly use it as my contact database. If I ever want to get in touch with an old colleague, I can find their address there (kept up to data by them). Plus, I know what they are up to (status updates when they switch jobs etc). Plus, if I check out a company, I can easily see who I know that works there. All good things. That's why I don't want random people as my contacts - it messes all of the above up. I wrote a bit more on the pros and cons of LinkedIn as I see it: http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/

[rajacombinator]

That's kind of interesting. Why were they so excited to get his invite and why was he so worried about managing his connections? (Ie uninviting people.) Curious to understand the behavior.

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All those people apparently felt some sort of personal connection by the act, it was a very strange phenomenon. He had not cleared out his contacts in a decade! He had "reached out" to many past vendors, former colleagues, etc. They all want to "reconnect" and were emailing, messaging, etc. It was literally (in the correct use of the word), taking up a lot of his time with all the influx of emails and calls.