Connecting to people you know, but haven’t been in touch with for a while, can be a bit frustrating on LinkedIn.
I like LinkedIn as a tool for maintaining contact with people I meet, and also it is a good place to let others search for my cv/qualifications etc.
Since I don’t use it “profesionally” to search for others etc, I don’t want to pay money for a subscription, and this is the root cause of my (now former) problem with adding people.
We all meet a lot of people along the way in our life, and alot of the would be nice to hook up with on LinkedIn. The problem is, often their email address have changed since last time you talked, and even if you find them using a search on LinkedIn, you can not connect without the email they used when they registered!
Thus, I have added a position to the Experience part of my profile. I have called it “Other”, and it is a self-employed position which might as well have been called “Life” or something like that.
Using this position, I can add a conact simply by doing a search, and clicking “Add Tore to your network”. Then, you can add the person under “Business Partner”, selecting your “Other” company.
This may not be the nicest method, but if you want to save the $19.95 per month, is is quite ok.
I reckon this could be used for spamming people you don’t know and try to make them add you, but serious people will just ignore your request if they don’t know you, and also I don’t think it would make a good impression… 
