It's a professional social network. For example, I just had an acquaintance message me via linkedin, send me their resume which then let me refer them, getting

It's a professional social network. For example, I just had an acquaintance message me via linkedin, send me their resume which then let me refer them, getting them a job and myself a nice bonus. Could it have been done via Facebook or email? Maybe, but we're not social friends, so no Facebook connections between us, and we don't know each other's email addresses so they couldn't have discovered me easily. The semantics of linkedin are what matters. It's not a social network that's highly interactive in the way that email or facebook is, it's more an on-line resume post + people you've worked with that help establish the milieu you live in. Does linkedin "get" it? I dunno. I suspect that they do, but their growth targets can't accept this, so they keep doing things weirdly.