How to Easily “Unfriend” Someone on LinkedIn

How to Easily “Unfriend” Someone on LinkedIn


Posted: 14 Jun 2011 08:33 AM PDT




While it’s not always pleasant or something we do every day, the need to remove a social media contact does come up from time to time. The term “unfriend” was even named “Word of the Year” a couple of years ago. As a LinkedIn open networker, you do find yourself needing to perform this action more often than a typical LinkedIn user. You may find yourself connected to a spammer, a fake profile, someone who’s become a bother for whatever reason, or you may need to remove inactive accounts to “make room” for active and/or real-life connections. It sounds harsh, but it’s a fact of life, especially for those of us who are capped at 30K first-level connections and no longer able to accept invites and connect with the real-life contacts we work with every day.

While Facebook and Twitter allow you to easily remove someone by simply visiting their profile and clicking “unfriend” or “unfollow”, LinkedIn doesn’t have this capability. You must follow this clunky process to remove a connection:

1. Click on the “Contacts” link on the toolbar across the top of your screen.
2. Select “My Connections” from the dropdown menu.
3. Click on the “Remove Connections” link in the top right corner.
4. Wait for the page to pull up (if it ever does… see below).
5. Search by last name.
6. Click “Remove.”

This cumbersome and clunky process has become even more frustrating lately since the “Remove Connections” page has been timing out for me (and many other superconnectors) for the past couple of months. Those of us with large networks are no longer able to remove connections at all! Very frustrating indeed… While I’m hopeful that the recent IPO will free up some funds to enable LinkedIn to buy more servers and increase their bandwidth, I decided to contact Customer Service in the meantime to see if they could help out. Their only recommended solution to my problem was that they would be happy to cut my network from 30K first-level connections to 5K. What?? Ummmm, no thanks! Guess I was on my own to figure out a workaround…

Here’s what I came up with… my latest LinkedIn hack… a “Remove a Connection” Quicklink! Not only is this tip helpful for those of us who are no longer able to access the “Remove Connections” page, it’s also a much quicker option for anyone who needs to remove a connection, for whatever reason. Rather than a six-step process, you can go straight to a person’s profile and easily figure out the link to remove him/her.

Here’s how:

1. Go to that person’s profile and identify his/her unique LinkedIn member number. It’s the number embedded in their LinkedIn profile URL (right after “id=”).

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=000000000&authType=name&authToken=lqMQ&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore
2. Copy their member number, paste it at the end of this link and then plug the whole thing into your URL window. Voila! They’re removed!

http://www.linkedin.com/connections?breakConnections=&connectionChooser=000000000
This quicklink only allows you to remove one connection at a time, but at least it’s quick, easy, direct and will never time out on you! Happy networking!

Article BY:

Stacy Donovan Zapar San Diego, CA, United States Most Connected Woman on LinkedIn ~ Blogging about Social Media, Recruiting, Networking and Job Search Tips & Tricks… Pay It Forward!







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