LinkedIn is highly focused on metrics of user engagement. Endorsements motivate a lot of engagement by providing a low-effort way for users to articulate genera

LinkedIn is highly focused on metrics of user engagement. Endorsements motivate a lot of engagement by providing a low-effort way for users to articulate generally positive information about each other. Although skill endorsements could be shaped into something more rigorous and useful, that conflicts with engagement/virality goals which call for easy ways to quickly message dozens of contacts. In other words, no kidding endorsements are useless. That isn't the point.