However, if email’s lack of friction encourages spam, the ease of requesting and creating LinkedIn recommendations has made it easy for some folks to collect LinkedIn recommendations like trophies (“Jason is a fantastic co-worker with great insights”). Those profiles can look suspicious, especially if most of the recommendations are generic or half-hearted. So, in evaluating LinkedIn recommendations – don’t count them and assume that the person with the most recommendations is the best. Instead, do the hard work of reading them, checking on who they’re from, and evaluating whether they’re canned or real.

One final note: in addition to writing the post you so kindly linked to, I’m also the @rsomers who mentioned creating scarcity by limiting the number of recommendations one could write. That was in the spirit of thinking out loud…just as it’s sometimes suggested that spam could be eliminated by imposing a small fee on sent email. The economic theory behind it is sound, but I wouldn’t advocate it in either case.