A few years ago, I got an email from an acquaintance with the subject line, what is alignable "Customer Referral." The email said that his acquaintance wanted to connect on Alignable to refer business to me. I had never heard of Alignable, and I hadn't talked to this person in years. I wasn't even sure he knew what my field of work was, so I was a little suspicious that he would be thinking to send business my way. On top of that, the email was formatted as plain text with a big blue link in the middle - I've been around the block enough to know not to click links in strange emails, so I ignored it.A year later, I got the exact same email from another acquaintance. It was someone I had never met in person, and may only have been CC'd on an email chain. I ignored this email too. But when I started getting more and more - often from people I hardly knew - I decided to look into this Alignable thing.Alignable was released in 2013 as an online network for local businesses, like a LinkedIn/Facebook hybrid. The intent was to encourage business owners to network and refer business to one another. Think of it as an online Chamber of Commerce.