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LinkedIn Promises To Bring Order and Meaning To Your Useless Endorsements (qz.com)
Oliver Staley, reporting for Quartz: LinkedIn's endorsement feature has never felt like the most trustworthy of sources. Rather than a panel of star witnesses who can honestly vouch for you, it more often seems like a random assortment of friends, acquaintances, and opportunists hoping for an endorsement in return. LinkedIn has recognized the problem and is trying to address it by creating a hierarchy of endorsers. Instead of all your endorsements having equal weight, the site will highlight people who might actually have some claim on knowing you, such as former colleagues and classmates, or who have credibility in the field. The goal is to make the feature more like the real world, where you ask for recommendations from people you trust or are in a position to know, says Hari Srinivasan, head of the LinkedIn team developing the feature. "If you want to find a good designer, you ask other good designers," he said.
A few years ago, I got a network request from the college-bound daughter of a client of mine. I thought, "Oh that's nice. She's starting early to build her professional network." So I clicked the acknowledgement. I then got a message stating something like, "Great! We'll notify her that you are interested in joining her network!"
I don't know if that was the exact wording, but the message made think there was an AI at work trying to make connections on behalf of the girl, and that because I responded, it would send my request to her out of nowhere. So she's 18 and I'm 40, and now I look like some kind of creepy stalker.
I haven't used LinkedIn since that day. It's just as well. I see little value in the site. To me, it's just a tool for head-hunting companies to spam me with requests to hire me or help the recruiter find someone who has my skill set and qualifications. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.