There's a difference between having a social life on a site and having a social network. A network is mostly passive -- just keeping contact information. Having a social life is much more active. The big drawback to the <2.0 sites is that most of them encourage activity of some sort. ie, lj encourages comments and posts and reading.
For me, LinkedIn is used for networking only -- and actually mostly to get information about people. I think Facebook has a real win because you can decide what kinds of activities you want to perform while you're on it. So, you can choose to be passive in your social network or you can be active, having a social life on it. The one-stop shopping concept only works if you provide folks with *everything* they want in that one place, which Facebook has been able to do by providing an API, so Facebook doesn't have to figure out the best applications for their users.
The degrees of separation game is not fun, nor do I think it's really a game. It's something to look at every so often, finding contact details of folks you might want, and the like. Relationships can be forged, but they don't *need* to be.
For me, LinkedIn is used for networking only -- and actually mostly to get information about people. I think Facebook has a real win because you can decide what kinds of activities you want to perform while you're on it. So, you can choose to be passive in your social network or you can be active, having a social life on it. The one-stop shopping concept only works if you provide folks with *everything* they want in that one place, which Facebook has been able to do by providing an API, so Facebook doesn't have to figure out the best applications for their users.
The degrees of separation game is not fun, nor do I think it's really a game. It's something to look at every so often, finding contact details of folks you might want, and the like. Relationships can be forged, but they don't *need* to be.
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