Snap! LinkedIn is Not A Social Network?

Marshall Kirkpatrick is pulling pants down again, and after panning the LinkedIn decision to be a closed platform, he bitchslaps Dan Nye, CEO, and Facebookers, too:

[from LinkedIn Platform to Be a Closed One]

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It’s Not a Social Network!

Nye also told the Times that LinkedIn doesn’t consider itself a social network, either. That’s funny, that’s what Facebook loudly insisted on to its developers pre-platform launch, too. They weren’t allowed to mention MySpace or the phrase social networking in their PR. Facebook is a social utility - they insisted. That was an eye-roller at the time and sounds even sillier now.

We’ll see what the LinkedIn platform looks like when the rubber finally hits the road, but when it happens - don’t quit your day job to be a LinkedIn app developer.

Looks like Facebook is winning with the ‘Social Graph’ meme (which is dumb), but at least they are willing to admit it is largely synonymous with Social Network.

Reminds me of Jonathan Miller’s sidestepping of ethnic typecasting when he said, ” I’m not a Jew. I’m Jewish. I don’t go the whole hog.” [As reported by Steven Pinker in The Stuff Of Thought]

Maybe sidestepping the social networking term has some marketing purpose, but it seems like nonsense to me.