I never met a man I didn't like. No wait, that's a lie.

I’m one of those casual users of LinkedIn. I always accept invitations, and I write recommendations when asked ― and sometimes when I’m not asked.

And when I do write a recommendation, I mean what I say. So if I happen to write that someone is brilliant, it means I really, no-kidding, honest-to-God think they are brilliant. And if I should happen to say someone is a congenital, practicing idiot, well, I guess I mean that too. (But I don’t plan on any such of a thing, so relax.)

So I’m poking around this morning, having received an update that tells me So-and-So is now in the Such-and-Such Group or This’n has “started a new retail project!” and on and on, like I care. But I see that someone who had written a pretty good recommendation about me and us had written an almost identical one about someone else in this town in the same line of work as we are. So how much is either one worth in that light? I don’t know. Probably not very much. Not that he didn't mean what he said. But if they are the best in the city, how come we're so brilliant? I'm confused. But that's not unusual.

The very nature of a recommendation is to say something nice, so a site full of nice things is, well, I don't know what it is. Nice, I guess. But useful?

LinkedIn fascinates me. I guess it’s a great networking tool if you really work it, but jeezy-peezy, I’ve got things to do. Collecting all those contacts and writing and asking for all those recommendations can eat up a lot of time. You know? Like Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk and rest. Just keeping up is hard work. But if anybody out there is “working on a new retail project!” believe me, I want to know about it.

ASAP.