Personal Endorsements and Connections for Sale or Exchange on LinkedIn?

Last week, I wrote and posted a blog article, titled “Real or Fake; How Reliable Are LinkedIn Professional Recommendations?“, and since then, I have received notes from different users, claiming that this kind of thing has been going on for a while on LinkedIn.

And it’s not just some users that are exchanging personal endorsements on LinkedIn, according to the Entrepreneur.com Blog, some LinkedIn users such as Steven Burda, have been exchanging personal connections in exchange for personal endorsements.

“It has been happening for quite some time. I have had people write their own endorsement and send it to me within minutes of connecting asking me to post it. I delete them instead. I would love to see this behavior stop.” Says Sheila Etheridge, Owner of SME Management.

Usually, when I browse through personal profiles for business contacts on LinkedIn, and I look at recommendations posted on any user’s profile, I generally regard that person as someone reliable and trustworthy as illustrated by the recommendations displayed on his or her profile.

But, I only now realize that, not all of the personal recommendations that are displayed on many of the LinkedIn users’ profiles are actually posted by users whom they have known or done business with or have worked with, but they might simply be a shrew of people selling, buying, trading and or exchanging personal endorsements for personal favoritism, and that simply means that these professional networking sites may not be as reliable as they seem to profess.

Now the question I have for LinkedIn is this: What are you going to do about this shrew of some of your registered users scamming, selling or buying, trading, and or exchanging personal connections and endorsements for personal favoritism or gain on your site?