Alicia L. Cervini's Thesis on Social Networking Software Identifies a number of Useful themes:
First, Social Networking software is not just the recent flurry of online networking tools.
Instead, it is the whole sphere of software-based tools that allow people to manage (track contacts ), grow (find new contacts to extend the network), and communicate with your social network. This includes, email, IRC, blogs, as well as Ryze, Friendster, etc.
Second, the two goals of software enabled social networking are
1 - To manage more than 150 contacts that we could probably do effectively on paper or in our heads, and
2 - To move this new extended network beyond merely an online set of "friends" to a real-world set of contacts who affiliate/meet/collaborate (in general participate in shared activities), around shared purposes/interests.
In other words, it is not because you both like red wine, that you connect, but because you like it enough to for a friendship around wine tasting events. The members of your wine tasting "group" actually meet to taste wine, hear about new wines, learn about viniculture, etc. And they form relationships based on all the extra connections that come from being in the wine tasting group space together - in other words they form a small community.
If Social Networking Software does not contribute to a shift from online contact to real-world interactions, then it will not survive. So the key is the ability to form Networks/Tribes, etc and Create Events that people actually attend.
If Churches, and Book Clubs, Fraternities, and Sports Teams are examples of Real-world affiliations that can be successful in forming real friendships. How can social networking software facilitate 1 & 2 above. Can the software enable you to manage a network beyond 150 people, and can the software enable you to get together with some subset of these people around a shared activity (like church, or politics, or sports, etc).
If SNS cannot do this then maybe it has degenerated into a form of entertainment, where you can play with the pictures and interests of others to form endless webs of potential connections that never really come to anything - wasting time doing this can be entertaining, but it is not social networking.
1:42:51 PM 
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