Who reads LinkedIn recommendations?

When I look at my LinkedIn profile recommendations, I want to hire myself right away. For instance,

Monika Hamori
fue tu asesor

“Sergey is one of the brightest and most capable colleagues that I have worked with. It is a pleasure for me to write a recommendation for him. While an MBA student at IE Business School, Sergey worked as my research assistant. He contributed to a white paper on the career management issues of young high-potentials and to papers on executive search firms and CEO careers. I was truly impressed with the effort and the thoughtfulness with which he carried out his tasks. He not only - very professionally - executed the tasks that I told him to do, but often came back to me and suggested more sutiable ways of doing a particular task. I benefited greatly from working with him, which is very rare for me in a relationship with a research assistant. Based on his dedication to work and his extremely great analytical abilities, I am pleased to recommend Sergey for any project or employer, I am confident that he'll do very well.” 

Professor, Instituto de Empresa Business School (académico)

But do headhunters and employers share the same sentiments?

It's nice to receive recommendations, and there are several reasons for that:

• you ask for recommendations from the people you know will comment well on your achievements;
• I have never seen a "negative" recommendation on LinkedIn - I guess someone would rather not write anything than spend time on critique no matter how constructive it is, because the profile owner will never display it publicly;
• reading good things makes us feel better - it's a basic self-esteem principle.

Unfortunately, all this is too well known to recruiters and other job sites users, so nobody expects miracles. Thus, unless you have a truly weighty name to put behind the recommendation, is it worth the pain of going around and soliciting those? I have noticed recently that my classmates started recommending each other on LinkedIn. Maybe it won't hurt, but it oh so well reminds me of the fable about the cuckoo and the rooster praising each other on exceptional quality of their singing.