Just networkin’


Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again

— “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan
Jeff Pulver says he’s abandoning LinkedIn for Facebook to focus all his “professional business social networking contacts” while Chris Brogan says in Lee Corso fashion, “wait, just a minute there,” LinkedIn still does some things Facebook doesn’t but just needs some help.
Steve Rubel says Facebook is a fad like well, LinkedIn and Friendster and Flickr and YouTube and iTunes and iPhone. Watch what people do with the technology, not the technology itself, he says.
Among 10 things Susan Mernit says we’ve learned from Facebook is:

Technology teaches possibility. It’s true that Facebook is a fad, as are the other hot sites of the moment–but it’s also true that the big rush onto Facebook tells us more about what users want–and about how particular behaviors, once established, seek to find a home. Create that home, power that home, and babe, you win.

Pulver’s seemingly main reason for aligning around Facebook for all contacts is the “wealth of opportunity for vibrant interaction between users and groups of users on Facebook.”
And Brogan’s in his defense laments LinkIn needs a profile picture and says it has to turn its “platform into something even more valuable.”
Rubel zeros in on how these sites change business and society. And Mernit sees it all coming together more powerfully in the cell phone.
It’s fun watching what’s happening happen. Networking and social habits are being developed now that will, as Rubel suggests, have a profound impact on how society operates in the future (not better or worst, paritcularly, but differently).
For me the idea of hyperlocal anything, much less news, being tied to a clearly definable geographic area is a limited take on what is “local” or part of community. That has some overarching implications on what products or services people will gravitate toward.
Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts

— again from, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
On Twitter, On Facebook, On LinkedIn. On Pownce On Flckr. … well, you get the picture.
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