One of my mentors recently contacted me when she received a LinkedIn connection request via her Facebook inbox. Was it legit or spam? I decided to conduct a little experiment to see.

Over a year ago, Facebook assigned users a Facebook email address. If you do not update your email address, your Facebook email appears under the Contact Information section of your Facebook profile. Your Facebook email address is your page’s URL at Facebook.com. For instance, mine is [email protected].

I logged into LinkedIn and under Network> Add Connections> Any Email > Invite by Individual Email. I entered my own Facebook email address and pressed Send Invitations.

Next, I went back to Facebook and saw the following message in my inbox:

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In summary, I sent myself a request to connect with myself on LinkedIn via my Facebook inbox.

***The earth exploded.***

Practical Business Application

If you’re using Facebook for business, you’ll likely come across Facebook friends who you want to connect with on LinkedIn, to fully leverage a business relationship. In the event you don’t have a Facebook friend’s email address and it is not listed in her/his Contact Information section, you can still send the person a connection request via Facebook. I would suggest, however, that you follow up that request with a Facebook message telling your friend that you did indeed send the request and suggest that she/he log into their LinkedIn account before clicking on the button to confirm that they know you (otherwise, they may accidentally create a duplicate LinkedIn profile).