Nope, the semantic web was about reasoning. Linked data is about linking data, and in effect creating a large distributed database. One way to think about it, is to consider building a system that stores a tracking code for a package. Instead of storing XXX-XXXXXX-XXX use the URI so that it can just be deferenced to get more information. In effect you are linking your store data with shippers data.

This could allow you to write trivial queries to quickly identify if there are bottlenecks in how your packages are shipped etc.

Also the development of SPARQL was a significant milestone, that really changes how one works with rdf.

A linked data web could then be used to for reasoning on top of it, but it would need to be large and thus it needs to be useful before the reasoning can be used. For instance, imagine the original web when people were working on search engines with only a few pages... The pages need to exist first.

Quoting Wikipedia: "Linked Data is a sub-topic of the Semantic Web. The term Linked Data is used to describe a method of exposing, sharing, and connecting data via dereferenceable URIs on the Web."