As such, endorsements seem to have very little credence, and I certainly wouldn't be swayed by any I saw in other's profiles.
I can only surmise they endorse me because once you give an endorsement you're encouraged to endorse the endorser right back, and maybe they're hoping for endorsement.
In short, since I get unqualified endorsements from others, I don't put any stock in endorsements that others have. It was a nice idea, but they should really pull the service.
In comparison, I find he Groups noisy and pointless.
I used to try and put forth some genuinely helpful answers, and also made some good connections from it.
For the Groups, unless they are heavily moderated by the Group owner they devolve quickly into total crap. People either post pointless spammy press releases, links to lame blogs, or respond to questions for help with a problem with horrible product suggestions.
Answers evolved from a Q/A section to a just another portal for a social media expert to just refer to someone in their network. It was really annoying... The shutting down of Answers should be a warning to anyone that is trying to build credibility on a network, it can close at anytime and all your answers/reputation is gone
That's damning with faint praise - being better than groups isn't a very high bar ;-)
Everything else like endorsements (the most useless feature) groups, answers, job postings are mostly crap and does not really add much more value than other existing career sites.
For example, if I am interested in a person/company, I try to look them up on linkedin. Their profile tells me what I need to know if they have relevant information listed. To an extent, I could care about their "answers" or group activity but does it really mean much when the newsfeed says "X person just joined IT professionals group". Sure, other than the fact that I already know he is IT professional.
