Refreshingly, I find the conclusion to be – and I hope I’ve not got the sticky end of the stick – that social networks are like any other fad. They start ‘underground’, there are ‘early adopters’ (who get some real benefit), there are those who arrive before the peak (if you like)and mop up the remaining spilled drops of value, and there are those who pile in too late, play with it for a bit and then discard it.

And – another nail in the coffin of social media (if you like) – the audience figures at the time of implosion are not, I’m afraid, terribly sizeable. So if you’re someone who’s thinking of using social media as a marketing tool, a) you’re probably too late and b) you’d be better off with a proper strategy.

Finally – if one thinks that social media will somehow turn one into an amazingly networked business success, well, – one either is a networker and entrepreneur, or one isn’t. Twitter ain’t going to make a difference.

That’s my thruppence worth – enjoyed reading your thoughts.

There’s a lot of interesting conversation about “what’s next” in social networking, and most of that appears to be the idea of Distributed Social Networking. In short, Social Networking will continue on all these sites but aggregated in one place.

The best example I’ve seen of solving this is FriendFeed. I felt the same overwhelming feeling you did Mike until I started using Friend Feed. Taking advantage of Twitter is so 2008…I want to see what businesses use FriendFeed and other similar sites!