​In networking, quantity is good, but quality is king

A few years ago, I had a long conversation with a good friend who was considered a networking expert in Europe. He did a lot of work with online networking or social networking. During this conversation, we got into a fundamental disagreement on the subject. He believed that networking was first and foremost a numbers game. He said that the more people you were connected to, the stronger your network. At first, I went along with this comment, agreeing that the number of people in your...