Required ... Social Aggregators

I came across a blog by Luis Suarez about How to Boost your Social Capital with Facebook. Interesting read. To quote ...

I am not sure what you would think, but, to me, one of the best ways to connect with people is by being able to find common ground, interests, ice-breakers, something in common to both that we can share going further than just the pure business contact, so that we can start slowly building up our trust levels and collaborative working. To me that is the whole key behind social networks, that kind of connection. And Facebook seems to be exceedingly good at it, although I can agree there is still room for improvement, but I am sure that over time it will eventually get there.

I agree completely with Luis that the basic building block of social networking is the common ground which you would share with the other person. Definitely, this has to be more than simply work. I am sure you would never have gone to a real life meeting where the conversation was entirely about work. As human beings, we need to connect at a personal level. Of course, what this leads to is a lot of chatter in the network, but I guess that is one of the by-products.

I am quite into LinkedIn. I find linked to be a very nice network ... Though, purely focused on work. Actually, I find building up a work related network to be far more important, though of course, it cannot be totally work related. Having said that, I came across an article about The Missing Link. Quite a comprehensive article, but again, it makes out more than what actually is. To me, this leads to some confusion. Which is the better social network? Or, is there any such thing as the better network? I would think so. Though, which one you would vote for would depend on what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for a date, I dont think linkedin would rate very highly.

Of course, a lot of folks are members of multiple social networks. Its about making sure you dont miss out on anything. If you restrict yourself only to linkedin, you are missing out on whats happening over at facebook, or myspace. And, vice-versa. In a working day, where attention spans and time is in short supply, I wonder how this can endure. How about some social network aggregation? What I am asking for is a tool like RSS which lets me connect to my social networks, regardless of where they reside. Somewhat on the lines of an indiatimes messenger which came and went quite a few years ago, which could get you connected to your yahoo, msn, and aol (and a few more) IM lists from a single place. Lets you just connect to a single point, and reach out to your connections no matter which social network. Or, is this asking for a lot?