As implemented, they're basically useless. Asking "does X know about Y?" without verifying that I have any knowledge of Y myself doesn't do much. My dentist has endorsed me for things like "Cloud", and while he's a great guy and good at his job he can barely work his iPad.
I personally view those as noise at best and very skeptically at worst -- if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they actually don't know much about it.
> if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they actually don't know much about it.
I disagree with your reasoning here. While I agree endorsements are useless, I also believe that makes them more or less meaningless. I don't think jumping to conclusions based on endorsements, weather positive or negative, is a good idea.
I personally view those as noise at best and very skeptically at worst -- if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they actually don't know much about it.