to interact online realtime with honesty and integrity in either personal or business groups (twitter is a near perfect tool) to address an issue, form an opinion or speed up resolution of an issue is social networking.

We are very fortunate that the free nature of Internet site membership was driven by advertising dollars being shifted to the Internet.

It is my sincere hope that social networking will allow us to address this current world crisis as we migrate from the Information Age to the Communication age.

The speed and global reach of Social Network interactions is mind boggling. Love the direction.

Enjoyed the Blog.

It is a lot easier for us to find communities with like interests, or create those communities. A lot of what we in the social networking space are doing now is exploring how to actually start up a community, and then how to mobilize those groups to action. Powerful stuff.

That’s all so true. I work in PR, and I certainly understand the value of having a relationship (even a simple, e-mail-based relationship) as opposed to just being a name on a list.

Far too many people think that, as you said, they can flip a switch, fire up a Facebook profile and request friendships that will lead to checks just flying into the mailbox. That’s sad.

Here’s an example: On LinkedIn I’ve been contacted by a couple score of former colleagues from my B Dalton, Barnes & Noble and Waldenbooks days. Perhaps two of them responded back to my short, but friendly, update of what I’d been doing these, oh, perhaps 10-20 years since I’d seen them – and my request to “let me know what you are up to.” The rest were satisfied to have the link – not the relationship.

A blog is perhaps the most powerful networking tool ever invented (think guest blogging, ability to “interview,” feature articles, etc.) – but not because of the technology. It’s not the links. It’s the relationships. Those don’t grow because of the link, the tag, the poke, or the list. They build because you reach out and touch someone – and continue the relationship by emailing, giving a call (those old things called phones), and dropping in and visiting when you land in their town.

I guess I don’t have much to add at this point, other than this:

Resolved: Social networks are about the people, and Twitter is a social network – perhaps even more so than Facebook. Fair to say?

I wrote a post awhile ago talking about why a blog is a social network and, for me, that is true to a certain extent. I’ve met people because of my blog, I can find the useful communication tools and tie them into my blog, and much more.

However, I truly believe that social networking is people, and in the case of our modern, distributed, community we perceive it to be different than it really is. We connect with people, we learn from each other, trade ideas and opportunities. This is not much different than “old school” networking except that we use very different tools – hyper-connected tools that allow us to communicate in real time.

Wow for a long comment – didn’t mean to do that.

Regards,
Rick

Sites like Flickr could be considered a social network. Messaging, commenting, friending, etc.

But Connie’s idea that you consider more the idea of these things as tools probably is the most helpful point to your thoughts.

Nice post. Btw, @RickMahn twittered a link to this and that’s why I read your post.