Each week I get ‘invitations’ to join somebody’s online network. More and more invitations…to more and more networking sites. Almost always (so far), the invitation is from somebody I actually do know. If I don’t, they are often a recruiter looking to grow the world’s largest online network for themselves and their wallets. (Hint: if the person has a gazillion contacts, join at your own risk.) I feel strongly that having a good network is THE best marketing you can do for yourself. And, there’s some evidence that the links from networking sites are good for your SEO.

I’m not new to online networking. In 1999, I built a website for ex-Compaq employees. Over margaritas and nachos, two friends and I traded stories of people we used to work with “in the old days.” We wondered where everybody had gone. Where they’d landed. What they were doing. That evening, we pulled together a list (a whopping 40 people) of names for whom we had email addresses. We sent out ONE email and wrote a couple of pages of copy for the site. The site grew to over 1500 members from that single “invitation.” I know it’d still be growing if the back-end software guys hadn’t moved on to bigger and better things. Our site for ex-Compaq employees grew very quiet — but it’s still there.

One thing that fascinated me was the quantity of executive-level folks that took the time to join the network. Executives (maybe it’s instinctive) knew better than anybody the importance of networking and staying in touch.

There are several people I spoke with after finding them again– and we got to know each other even better than we had while working together. Amazing that you can be in a meeting with somebody every single week and not know a thing about them outside of their job. As people were laid off or “retired” from Compaq, the emails would fly between those of us trying to help each other out. One thing is certain– especially in the business world: “it’s who you know.”

LinkedIn soon became my replacement networking site. They made it easy for me to start building my network by integrating with Outlook. I now respond to requests from Plaxo members (and most recently from Spock.com members). And, I have a MySpace site (my niece insisted) that I never, ever visit. And there are a couple of other networks that I just haven’t taken the time to investigate.

So, my question is (and I ask myself this with almost every invite I get from a non-LinkedIn site), how many of these networking sites can there be and how many of us have the time to grow and maintain multiple networks?

Yes, the sites themselves are doing everything they can to make it easy for us — combing through Outlook contacts, checking against your other networks, reminding you to update your profile, nagging you to answer an invitation, etc., etc., etc. I just wonder how much time we can spend actually networking when there are so many places to be?? Anybody have the same feeling??