I couldn’t help noticing the paragraph in the r/w/w piece I blogged about earlier today that spoke directly to me (actually, about me )
… early adopters are the first to sign up and create profiles on every service that launches … sometimes they’re not so great after all, and they end up fading away into nothingness … [but] these failures don’t seem to dampen our enthusiasm … if they’re the next big thing (or so everyone says), we’re supposed to jump on board and use them [empasis added]
Nearly dead-on. The author just forgot to mention that early-adopters are also masochistic self-loathing obsessive compulsives who would toss their grandmother under a bus for the chance to try every insipid new social-networking service 24 hours before their peers rather than spend a moment engaged in actual social interaction.
But other than that, good job. Really well done.
pm blog 
There is still a tremendous gap between online connections (friends) and true business associates.
An example: LinkedIn Chicago – a group comprised of local area networkers.
Once your inside, you quickly realize the majority of the participates are in the “recuriting” business. Either posting positions, looking for positions an the odd – work from home deals.
This question of validating the use of Social Networks for business returns too the basic approach: it depends on your business. If you currently have a network of clients that needs a more simply approach of communication between different areas of (1) company. This type of tool saves atleast the process of multi-forwarded msgs and lays the ground work of collaboration concepts. But prospectings for new clients seems to miss the mark.
If you want to test the theory, post something that’s direct at what your company is looking for in the way of new business. Don’t be surprised if the results range from:
(1) “this is not the proper forum”
(2) “hey, everybody got this”
(3) adminstrators – blocking your IP
One approach that has some merit is creating an effective msg that pulls readers off the network toward you landing page: blog, website, etc…
The only one’s that really reap any benefits is the host. They relate the user base too potential advertisers. I thought the concept of “Social Networks” was too eliminate the need for extra advertisment dollars.
Most of us want to move forward from talkers to do’ers