Stowe Boyd has a good post about social networking on Get Real (Social Networking: Broken, Boring, or Offtrack?). I've never really understood the attraction of these things. I joined one, but couldn't really make myself interested in visiting it. As Boyd argues, what we really need are more tools that connect us dynamically, through blogs and similar self-publishing. For example,

SixApart, or other blog technology players, could include features to make the social linking that is implied by blogrolls, trackbacks, and hyperlinks more explicit, or more obviously searchable. "What is being read by those that are strongly connected to Get Real?" for example. This is sort of what Technorati and other search tools are offering, but only Deli.cio.us seems to be on a social bent, here, and even that is more focused on the tags than the taggers and their relationships.