Social Networking

I've been doing a fair bit of work recently looking at social networks, several start-ups that I can't name (yet) and it's been fascinating seeing the different approaches to this new phenomenon.

And then I realised that it isn't really new, it's just been given a fantastic new lease of life via the internet and via so called "web 2.0" tools. It's never been easier to keep in contact with disparate groups of people and sites have been created and evolved to serve niche markets. Here are some of the ones I belong to:

Friends Reunited - Main use for this is my old school friends from Liverpool, most of whom I discovered I wanted to know what they were up to, where they were living, jobs, families etc. - but there was nobody there that I had really missed and they have all faded away into non contact again

Yahoo Groups - The first type of social network I can remember. I belong to several groups - one is a collection of people who all love Science Fiction and Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy in particular. We originally met in the SF Forum on CompuServe back in the mid 90's and amazingly we still go through spurts of activity and messaging and the occasional meeting. The last unfortunately was to go see the HH movie, not a pleasant experience. Stay Hoopy guys. The other important group for me is "Ex_Amazon" started by me to keep in contact with the amazing people that I worked with in the first few years when Amazon.co.uk was launched. In fact it's the main reason for this post today - we are getting together tonight for a few beers - first time in a couple of years, will be interesting to see how people have moved on.

LinkedIn - This is my main business network, with over 200 contacts to my name. It's proven very useful for me as a consultant, both bringing me work and also helping me forge new contacts leading to more business. Of all these sites, this is the one I currently use most often.

I have also joined other sites like MySpace, LifeLogger, Flickr etc., but I can't say I am really active with any of them.

Just like the long awaited interaction between yahoo IM, AOL and MSN, I wonder when these different networks will start to talk to each other and share data. A Trillian for social networking, not there's a thought, where is my VC phonebook...