LinkedIn Recommendation vs Endorsements

As everyone has notices Linkedin added yet another supposed upgrade to the things you can do and or add to your linked Profile, Endorsements. These are skills that you list that allow others to basically vote on the ones they feel you are great at. The higher the number of votes on a skill the more people supposedly feel you have it. The problem is half the people that vote saying you have that skill really do not know. They will endorse you and then ask you to endorse them even though you hardly know them and very worked with them. I hear about people who  get over 100 requests a week, some from people they do not know all saying they endorsed them and asking they return the favor. In addition to that, because of these endorsements a lot of people have stopped getting recommendations, which are a much more accurate statement of your skills as they come from people who actually worked with you. Now all that said, it does not mean your endorsements are worthless. If you see someone with a lot of endorsements, and they match what their LinkedIn profile says and they have a large number of recommendations as well you can be relatively safe in saying those endorsements are pretty accurate. Treat endorsements as ju7st a piece of the puzzle but a piece that is next to worthless without the other information I mentioned above.