"Social" Networking

There are two things that strike me in Hargadon's blog. First, his argumennt that engagement is more important than the content. Doesn't the content drive engagement? Perhaps not in a social networking context. It would in a blog context for sure. But I gather relationship is the real key in this virtal world. The other comment that I found interesting was that the site should be guided. Again, this was somewhat counter-intuitive to me. Which raises the question, at what point do these sites cease to be social networking sites, and become something else all together? If you are working this hard at something, when does it cross the line into a commercial or business context? From an education standpoint, the content would be critical to maintaining engagement, and of course it would need to be guided. I suppose I would see the key as creating passion, either for the content or for relationship. I am reading the latest bio on Einstein and I wonder what it must have been like to be a correspondent of his. Would we all be interested in his blog? What sort of social network would he create today? And would his celebrity trump some of the arguments of Hargadon? I am an avid Twitter fan and I do see the value in this networking tool, although the sheer volume is a great barrier to effective communication. But I have met several people via tweets and have used their services or saved their websites. but this is where these sites seem to be driven by business relationship or commercial context more than social networking. It is this blur on underlying motivation that holds the key to the future of these sites.