It's The Network

The Wikipedia definition of a social network:

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.

Or...a place to hang out online. :-) What makes a difference however, is where you're hanging out and what you're looking to get out of it. Take mySpace. I sign in to check my friend Cathy's blog. That's it. She refuses to go back to Blogger (which I love) for whatever reason.

But unless I'm whisked there by a link from somewhere else, I don't go on my own accord. Does it suck? Nope. Is is for me? Nope.

LinkedIn is good, for those us who like to connect with professionals and see their profiles. I think recently they've really stepped it up as a networking tool because it was mostly a "profile viewer" and a "connections" aggregator. My apprehension to aggregating connections was that I'm not comfortable with recommending those I don't know anything about, other than their profile. Does that defeat the purpose of online networking, well, sort of. I think there should be some type of underlying commonality other than "we both signed up to LinkedIn."

But on the plus side, it's solid, well-respected, well-known, everyone you know is registered, but its not as fun as let's say...Facebook.

Ah Facebook...now there's the holy grail of funness. Downside: too much fun and very little business going on. My ideal social/business network would be something like...LinkedBook.

Yeah, I made it up. LinkedIn+Facebook. Do you love it? Can you build it?

I think iHispano may have...sort of. Well it's not called LinkedBook, but it has a lot of what we need and what we like in a social network.

And of course, HPNG has partnered with the online, once job-board only, newly-revamped social site. So there you have it, awesomeness, funness and business profiles, all in one place.

Hmmm....LinkedBook, I should trademark that.

Click to join the HPNG Online Networking Site