[ser0]

I agree, I think LinkedIn's value for network participants is very low. For someone trying to find information it is even lower. The one useful thing I see from it now is that it helps confirm someone's claim that they worked somewhere; through checking of people in their network.

However, things like promoting of skills, constant 'do you know ...' emails, and other meaningless profile building tasks that results in engagement with the website, appears to be little more than an exercise in cheap self promotion.

Perhaps I'm not the intended audience, but I find that marketing types tend to be the most active users on LinkedIn. What that says about the nature of the service, I'm not too sure at this point.