(Sung to the tune of Reciprocity, from Chicago)

I think it’s brilliant: there, in a nutshell, LinkedIn points out one of the key drivers of social media: reciprocity. Here’s the picture:

With this new skills-based endorsement feature the reciprocity is obvious. Every LinkedIn user has a set of skills claimed. Every other user can endorse those skills. So it’s “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours,” built in. Do I want to endorse people who endorse me? Yes, of course I do. Who has the most endorsements? The person who has given the most endorsements to other people.

There’s nothing new about the principle involved. It started with Facebook likes, evolved into twitter retweets. Like me, I’ll like you back. Retweet me, and I’ll retweet you back. The new LinkedIn feature looks to me like they saw how well the Klout topics-based +K feature was working, and made theirs even easier than Klout.

This should have been obvious all along, but I like the reminder, with what LinkedIn just did.