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The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Over the weekend, I decided to try to fill out my LinkedIn network a bit by sending out invitations to contacts who might be interested. I sent out about 100 invitations, mostly to friends and colleagues who were not yet registered LinkedIn users. I was pleasantly surprised at the response–nearly 50% have accepted so far–and I was reminded of a couple of interesting facts in the process.

1. Branding is everything.

Think about how difficult it would be to get 50 out of 100 people to join any online community. Ignoring invites to random services and communities is a daily occurrence for most people who spend a lot of time online. It took me until late last year to finally join MySpace, and I only did so after hearing the name 60 gazillion times. My utterly irresistible charm notwithstanding, my invitees joined LinkedIn largely because they had read or heard its name discussed favorably enough times that they had already made an internal decision that they’d sign up if the opportunity presented itself. I just happened to be that opportunity for them.

2. The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Another interesting tidbit was that a large percentage of my most productive and efficient contacts accepted before 6am in their respective time zones. That’s right, imagine being finished with your daily correspondence before eating breakfast everyday; or even just imagine waking up early enough to eat breakfast everyday:-) People who want to get things done with a fresh mind and no distractions wake up early. Plain and simple. Unless of course you’re a freak like me, in which case you stay up all night and sleep through the morning.

I’m thinking that the early risers are definitely on to something. If I could just manage setting my sleeping habits as well as I do with the VCR timer I’d have a lot more, erm, worms at my disposal.

BTW–If you’d like to join or check out my LinkedIn community please check here.

Here’s a recent post I did on LinkedIn and Facebook.

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This entry was written by Steven Nishida and posted on July 29, 2007 at 8:32 pm and filed under human nature, perspective, peer2peer, relationship, friendship, web2.0, community, technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Although it is wonderful getting up early and getting such a lot done by 7 am. the down side is
    never actually seeing the end of an episode of LOST, and being asleep and drooling on the sofa by 9.30 most nights.
    I am beginning to see the wisdom of naps, that may be a way to get the maximum done in the morning and keep up with my demanding tv
    schedule.

    1. Miss Behaving on July 29th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

  2. i’m with miss behaving on this one. yes it would be nice to have all my correspondence out of the way before six, but since all of the people i’d be mailing don’t start work til eight, it’s kind of pointless.
    also, steve, i’m with you on the night time thing. if you get me up early i’ll sit there bleary eyed in front of the monitor and get nothing done. let me have the night before though and i’ll work through it and sleep later.
    some people are good early, some aren’t. some people like eggs, some don’t. i guess what i’m saying is, there are enough worms to go round and some birds are just nocturnal.
    i used to pull a lot of those all nighters in uni. i’d always be awake for the entire week of exams, cramming the night before, regurgitating it in the exam the next morning, rinse and repeat.

    also, miss behaving, tv gets even better later on! all those crappy old sitcoms you thought were nightmares that haunted your childhood are real, and they’re all on!

    actually, screw that. this staying up late mallarkey screws with your head

    2. rob on July 30th, 2007 at 12:25 am

  3. I’d never heard of LinkedIn before I got your invitation, so it was your charm that got me to join ;) As for getting up early, my reason for getting up early is procrastination, ironically enough.

    3. Michael Stout on July 30th, 2007 at 9:50 pm

  4. Rob , you are right about there being enough worms for everyone .
    I once was a total night owl, but right now on Mondays, Discovery channel is doing this great series about an Everest Expedition. It starts at 10pm, and quite honestly I feel I have reached my own personal summit if I can watch it all.

    Now if only there were enough pieces of pie for everyone ;)

    4. Miss Behaving on July 31st, 2007 at 10:10 am

  5. Thanks for all the comments. Sorry I’ve been a bit slow in replying but the lively discussions are definitely appreciated.

    For the record, I’ve given up on becoming a morning person for now. I can’t change my work schedule anytime soon, so any adjustments I could make would be minor.

    Cheers,
    Steve

    5. realityonastick on August 4th, 2007 at 9:50 pm

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