Is LinkedIn linking people or just annoying them

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I got emailed this free productivity boost from LinkedIn, which offers you a free months trial using the premium package

LinkedIn Premium helps you to be more productive, with tools such as:

•	InMail: Contact anyone on LinkedIn without an introduction – response guaranteed!**
•	Expanded Profile Views: See expanded profiles of everyone on LinkedIn, even people outside of your network.
•	Who’s Viewed My Profile: See a complete list of who’s viewed your profile on LinkedIn.

Get these benefits and many more including the ability to view up to 700 profiles per search.

I think the InMail benefit and Expanded Profile View seem to be go against the philosophy of LinkedIn.  You are only able to see the profiles of people you have linked with and you should only be able to contact those people who you have linked with.

Let us not forget the warning messages about only accept LinkedIn requests from people who you know and then they give you a link to page telling you why this is important.  Well that is the LinkedIn philosophy unless you pay them some money in each month and then you can do what you like.

I believe some of the privileges above are why LinkedIn seems to be full of recruitment consultants harassing anyone and everyone.  I also wonder if anything actually happens when you report things as spam.

The loosening of its standards and rules is slowly but surely have a detrimental effect on LinkedIn with most of the noise on LinkedIn coming from marketers and recruitment consultant.   I would add LinkedIn does very well with the technology groups and I have read many interesting posts and articles on LinkedIn.  My main point is the interesting posts are out numbered by the mundane.

I wonder if LinkedIn is too big and entrenched like Facebook, you would have to say that it has become the standard tools in many companies and individuals social media strategies but many vast empires have fallen in the past.  Also if LinkedIn keeps going down the same path they might contribute to their own downfall.