LinkedIn backlash

Linkedin is one of the few sites that has certainly impressed me with it's clever design. I would rate it very highly for professional networking. It has one very popular feature "recommendations". Well, while I am not against recommending or get recommended by, as I have done both in past. But I see people who think that more and more people they have in their list (no matter how they know well each other professionally) and more recommendations they have received (mostly by requesting others) would make their prospects better. Umm oh, I wonder why are they are madly behind this. I receive a quite a few requests often. Some morning you check your emails and you see that some colleague in your company 2 years ago sends you a mail with subject "can you endorse me?". And the email read something like this

Dear ,

I'm sending this to ask you for a brief recommendation of my work that I can include in my LinkedIn profile. If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks in advance for helping me out. -

Now this above guy could be someone I don't know that well how well he/she is skilled. But now I can't deny the request so in a day or two I would look at some other recommendations available for my other LinkedIn friends, copy some matter and send what is requested for. He happily accepts and send me a nice Thank you email. I see people who worked completely unrelated departments and has probably no ability to judge other's work, go praising out of good relationships. May be what should happen on Orkut testimonials or somewhere similar. Does these people who have tens and hundreds of people in network and so many recommendations have no work other than hopping the jobs and sending such requests.

Next time I interview someome with many endorsements, I would probably be more cautious hiring them.