There’s a temptation in social media to push every button, flip every switch, and share everything with everybody. Privacy? Bah. That’s for old schoolers. Nowadays all the cool kids are oversharing, right?

To some extent, that’s true, but there are still certain things that people need to be more thoughtful about, and an email I got this afternoon from a fellow Linked-In user highlighted this rather forcibly.

Here’s what I received. The name’s been blanked out to protect their privacy:

Here’s what’s important to know: I have no idea who Karin J is, and have no experience with her professional services.

So why is she asking me to endorse her on LinkedIn? What kind of endorsement could I add anyway? “I don’t know who she is, but from her picture and profile, she seems nice and I’m sure would do a great job.”?

It’s tempting to send these sort of requests out to your social circle like buckshot from a gun, hoping for a few random stray hits, but in fact the endorsements will be more valuable, more accurate and more truthful if you spend the time to ensure that each and every recipient has worked with you and has had a good experience with your services.

Otherwise we just deprecate the entire concept of online endorsements. And that’d hurt us all.