[notdonspaulding]

Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason you keep getting these kinds of replies is because it seems like you have an idea about a second type of Professional Network that is different than what you described as your network of friends. Everybody's just trying to say that the real Professional Network is exactly the network of your friends, and if there is another kind of "purpose built career network" that people are talking about, it's the imitation of what you've got, not the other way around.

What you've described from your own experience is the substance of what a professional network is, and has always been. LinkedIn connection requests are trying to create a digital product in the form of the real-world phenomenon that you've experienced and described. If we're going to call one of them a professional network, everyone in this subthread is saying, let's give the real thing the name professional network, and the imitation a different name.

(None of this is intended to disparage LinkedIn. It is what it is, but if it's trying to be a substitute for real relationships between humans, it will always be the shadow, not the substance.)

[caddemon]

Eh I think there is a huge middle ground between "network consisting of work friends" and "LinkedIn network". Maybe it's different in academia but I know plenty of people that have a strictly professional network built from real world interactions - conference meet ups, seminar series, collaboration projects, etc. They would be happy to call each other up for work purposes but would never do something purely social together or consider each other friends.

I don't think the type of network I've just described is imitating anything. They are mutually beneficial but purely professional relationships. The fact that the internet has enabled people to have a much larger number of superficial relationships doesn't mean that what the poster was describing is the only way to have a "real professional network". Yeah it's a professional network, but it's not the only kind.

[ehnto]

That is the case I think, the two ideas about types of professional networks seems clear, and it would seem I probably see it differently to some. To me, "professional network" is better at describing a network curated for your career.

It's a tough one, because while I can see that it is also a professional network, said network would be pretty offended if I called them that. So I don't necessarily disagree with you, or even with the other commenters, but there is at least some room for subjectivity about what to call your own personal relationships.

[ZhangSWEFAANG]

This is exactly what I was trying to describe. People on HN are so much smarter than me lol. I used the word "informal", and you expressively described what I was intending to communicate.