This presents an interesting opportunity for the crafty entrepreneur, though.  Because, while everyone else is paddling around these crowded social ponds, opportunities abound in smaller, specialized social networks that center around a more precise focus.

Niche social networks can have a lot of great value when it comes to building connections with both potential customers and with potential partners.

SmallBizBee published a great list this week: 40 Social Networking Sites Specifically for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, and Startups.

While the list covers some of the more traditional ones (starting with LinkedIn), there are also some very specialized networks on the list, targeting needs that are unique to entrepreneurs:

• PartnerUp
• Qapacity
• Ryze
• FledgeWing
• The Funded
• Cofoundr
• Perfect Business
• E.Factor
• Raise Capital

Whether you are looking for funding, for partners, for customers or for advisors, there are social networks that cover the spectrum. If you think that Twitter is too overwhelming and that Facebook is for kids, then I’d encourage every entrepreneur to read through that list, identify a few that appear applicable, and then go check them out.

Resources for entrepreneurs can be plentiful if you know where to look, but as I’ve said before, finding the right business parter can be harder than finding the right spouse. So no matter what you are looking for when it comes to building your business, the more options, the better your odds of finding what you need.

So don’t limit yourself to the most obvious choices. Branch out and see what other alternatives might just fit the bill.

This is part of a much broader issue, though, and it’s one that is a constant struggle for most small businesses: how do we keep new sales coming in the door, when that’s not our background?

I find this to be a particularly big issue in the web space. So many of the entrepreneurs that I meet come from a development background, and they have started their venture with the Field of Dreams theory: “If I build it, they will come.”

And more often than not, nothing could be further from the truth. And even worse, is that all too often, a new entrepreneur will build a product with no thought to marketing or sales strategy until they are done building, and then they will shift their attention to client acquisition, as an after thought.

Often times this doesn’t happen until the entrepreneur is out of money, so hiring the right help is almost never affordable, and the entrepreneur is running so low on their savings that they are watching the clock tick down before they have to give up and go get a J-O-B from someone else.

The horrible reality is that marketing and sales is where most entrepreneurs drop the ball — and that is true whether your business is a product or services business. People have taken the democratization of data (the “Google effect”) to mean that, as long as they offer something good, that means they’ll be able to find customers. But that’s not true at all. The democratization of data means that you’re now competing with thousands of competitors doing something similar enough to what you are doing, that you not only need to be better, but you also need to find all new ways to get customers’ attention.

The rule of thumb for a new business owner is simple: your first year marketing and sales budget should be the same as your first year development budget.

Where technical entrepreneurs get into trouble is in thinking that since they didn’t have to pay anyone else to build their product, that means that their marketing budget can be small, too. Wrong. Do the match as if you had to pay someone, by the hour, to do the work. And then you’ve got a start.

But even more important than cost is timing: don’t wait until you’re at the end of the line to start marketing your business. By then you can’t afford experts, experimentation or the time it takes to really see progress.

The bottom line: building a marketing strategy with a solid sales pipeline won’t happen over night. If you wait until the week before you run out of money, you’re never going to get there. Start early, and put the same degree and quality of resources into the revenue generating aspects of your business as you do into your product.

After all, isn’t making money with your product critical to your business? Don’t make the mistake of treating it like an unworthy afterthought.

Keynotes

Starting off the day was industry leading strategist and Social Computing Journal Editor-in-Chief Dion Hinchcliffe. In a talk on one of this season’s hottest topics: How Social Media Can Enhance Enterprise Profitability. Covering both internal organizational and external, customer-facing examples, Hinchcliffe’s examples set the tone for the ubiquitous message of the day: social media is a set of tools. Their value is found in the behaviors and interaction of the people using them, not the technologies themselves.

Keynotes by Sam Lawrence and “whurley” followed, with common messages. (See SCJ’s coverage of Sam Lawrence’s Keynote.) In a talk comprised of crowdsourced topics, whurley covered everything from the long-term value of LinkedIn, Twitter and Friendfeed, to data portability, semantic web and HTML5 with predictions and expectations regarding what’s coming and what’s on the brink of going.

Sessions and Lessons

Session topics covered a range of topics from the Obama Campaign’s use of social media and Interactive Government, to social media marketing and community management, to how to bring the vibrant and diverse set of interactive communities in Austin together into a cohesive, collaborate “scene.”

In “Designing the Experience,” panelists discussed everything from Information Architecture and multi-variant testing, to de-mystifying complex and intimidating processes such as filing taxes or small business accounting via good user design.

Another session entitled “The Human Cloud” provided panelists with an opportunity to debate both human and technical aspects of “cloud computing” — ranging from the value of the term itself to the role of face-to-face interactions in “cloud-based” relationships. While no consensus was reached about either the human or technical aspects of “the cloud,” one thing was clear: everyone has different expectations, understandings and visions for what constitutes “the human cloud” and how much value it can ultimately provide.

As part of “Communication Trends that Matter Most in Social Media,” industry specialists from Dell and Southwest Airlines discussed everything from public relations, internal communications and organizational change. Lessons ranged from “talk like a real human being” to “you need a change agent who isn’t afraid of losing their job to break down walls.”

And the consensus among panelists is that companies who want to leverage social media can’t just look to one company that is doing something well. Instead, we need to look at several companies that are each doing one thing well. Cherry-pick different approaches and solutions to craft an over-all strategy to fit your organization.

Case Study: Southwest’s Rapping Flight Attendant

A social media phenomenon (heading to Jay Leno tomorrow night) that occurred via social media (YouTube) and which was only shared via social media (Twitter).

Goals and Plans

During “Experience City,” panelists kicked off “The Austin Interactive Initiative,” designed to harness the power of Austin’s youthful, energetic creative scene for the purposes of cultivating a cohesive community around the local interactive market.

All in all, Interactive Austin has been a tremendous opportunity for Austinites to connect, network and exchange ideas, while working towards a more unified sense of community. Even with tight budgets and elevated productivity demands, attendance is good, and the local participants in the various interactive spaces have come together for a day of collaboration and communication — precisely the two qualities most often associated with social media.

And then I got a job — that ultimately turned into a career — at a start-up. Pay dirt!

The transformation that sparked in me is still an endless source of amusement among my friends. It took me a while to realize why, but eventually it was clear: the problem with school is that there was an upper limit on what I was capable of achieving. It was an artificial cap on how well I could be scored. I found that inherently disincentivizing. In business, however, there is no upper limit. You can take something as far or as high as you can push it (given the right environment, of course).

And, even better, in a scrappy, entrepreneurial, risk-taking startup (especially one trying to survive an economic downturn) someone who is hungry, talented, teachable and willing to dive into the deep end of the pool head first has tremendous opportunity for growth. The first three years of my career were the most educational, exciting and energizing time of my life — all of my years of school combined couldn’t compare to those three years. Everything was new, everything was interesting and I never once had the slightest bit of doubt that I could conquer anything that came my way.

Ah, the hubris of youth!

Of course, there were downsides. Like many young people, I didn’t know my limits and was constantly pushing the envelope in ways that I probably shouldn’t have (and in ways that I’ve since learned not to do). Whereas many 26-year-olds may be more inclined to do that with parties, I did it with work. I ended up missing a lot of important events in the lives of friends and family because of that.

I was also still extremely idealistic about a great many things. Instead of The Pragmatic Contextualist, an appropriate blog title would have been something along the lines of The Snarky Idealist or Bring it On and Get Out of the Way! (Which, ironically, is still how some people tend to view me, though I have toned down considerably with age.)

But that idealism was invaluable to me, because it made me fearless: if anything is possible and I’m extremely capable, then what do I have to be afraid of? I don’t tend to be very risk-adverse in general, but I have become more cautious with age (though, not quite enough for either my husband or father’s tastes). Back then, though, it would never occur to me that I wouldn’t figure out a way to succeed at whatever I did — which meant I was a hopeless volunteer junkie.

My biggest rush came from fixing problems, and in a post-bubble burst start-up, there were plenty of things to be fixed. So I had an endless supply of opportunity, and endless confidence in my own success. Happily, I also had bosses who went from having nothing to lose by letting me try, to truly believing in my ability to make a positive difference.

As was inevitable, a few kicks in the teeth later, and I stopped being quite so cocky. The pragmatist in me was ultimately born of those experiences, and the eternal idealist retreated to the back, only to come out for the occasional political event.

One of the biggest, most valuable lessons I learned was how to deal with chaos. More recently in my career, I had a bizarre moment when a senior IT Director — who was easily 25 years older than me — groused that we were working in “the most chaotic environment” he’d ever experienced in his life.

I wanted to laugh and call him a weenie (I restrained myself — though barely). The environment we were working in at the time was easily the least chaotic environment I’d ever experienced, and his inability to roll with the punches made him a particularly weak and frustrating leader in my opinion, because he got frazzled very easily, whined constantly and was tremendously rigid. It never occurred to me until that moment that my ability to handle chaos was all that unique.

Naturally, one of the dangers of getting a bit too used to high volumes of chaos is that you can become a drama junkie. This did happen to me, and it took me a while (and outside circumstances) to curb it. But what I have seen of most drama junkies (and trust me, I wasn’t the only one I knew) is that, the older we get, the less tolerance we have for that same constant fever-pitch of insanity.

This is another reason that I have often recommended aimless twentysomethings seeking career advice to explore startups: because by the time people are settled in their career, married or have kids, startups can be a bit too rough on the lifestyle. So if you’re going to do them, best give them a shot while you’re young, energetic, single and have as few external obligations as possible.

But when I look back on that time now, I am profoundly grateful. I was drinking from a fire hose, and it never occurred to me there was any other way to work. I got to sample a spectrum of potential opportunities and figure out which ones held some appeal, and which ones didn’t. If I had found myself in a more stable, structured environment back then, I can’t imagine where I’d be now, because the lessons I learned there, and the all-you-can-eat-buffet of opportunities that I had available to me at the time are how I found my way into a career.

In the scheme of things, I look back on the most pivotal, impactful decisions of my life and the day I left the famed O’Reilly Publishing — which is where I thought I’d wanted to work for years — and went to MarketLive (at the time it was still called MultimediaLive) was one of them. And since then, I have found myself encouraging twentysomethings who do not know what they want out of a career to look at startups, because as long as they can develop a bit of tolerance for chaos (which I firmly believe everyone should do), they’ll usually find opportunities they never knew existed.

What do you think? Are startups a good or bad place to start out your career?

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how early career choices can really set the stage for the directions we take in life. As is often the case, many of the largest influences on our lives are not obvious until many years later. And while I am as likely as anyone to take them for granted, every once in a while something will happen to make me stop and consider the series of events that brought me to where I am now, and what the unintended consquences of seemingly small actions or events have ultimately provided.

There were three defining elements of my early career that I have been noodling on, because they had much larger impacts on me than I ever would have predicted at the time:

• Getting your start in a startup. What is the value to launching a career in a startup environment?
• Being in the ‘wild west’ of a new market space. What does it mean to be in a new space?
• Transforming a company from being “a services company” to “a product company.” What are the differences and why are they important?

Undoubtedly, the first two of those are a bit sexier than the third. However, all three ultimately shaped me in ways I never fully realized at the time. The lessons learned were a bit rough sometimes, but when I compare some of my experience to that of my peers, I realize that I had the opportunity to be involved in some things that have served me extremely well and that I wouldn’t trade in for anything.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll cover each of these topics in a separate post (each one is too long to combine them).

The video is posted and, as always, while I have a general dislike of watching myself on film (and a realization that when I don’t actively smile, I have quite the dour look on my face), it is still the single most valuable tool I know of for understanding how you carry yourself.

The person I wanted to meet most was Penelope Trunk. Penelope is probably the only blogger I read for entirely personal reasons on a regular basis (I guess it sounds weird to say I read a career blog for personal reasons, huh?).

She is also one of the few people who tends to give advice that I bears any resemblance to the type of work environments I’ve had in my life (tech startups, largely); and we have a number of other things in common, such as being the primary breadwinner for our family (and the associated sense of pressure and/or responsibility), being a reasonably a slightly bitchy and extremely sassy ENTJ who doesn’t really make any bones about liking to have things go her way; she has an inclination towards being a workaholic that has not always been helpful in her personal life; and her direct approach to damn near everything makes her an anomaly among her peers. She is also one of the only people who writes about finding and building relationships with mentors in any kind of tactical way.

Not only did I get to see her on a panel (full of men, of course) where she was routinely trying to bring up points that were too tactical for their taste, but the next day I got to spend a few minutes with her to do an interview that I’ll be writing for SCM tomorrow.

The ‘entertainer’ or bigger “social media celebrity” I wanted to see was Gary Vaynerchuk. Mission accomplished. As always, he was awesomely entertaining and tremendously energetic. Thirteen hundred people bounded out of that auditorium after he was done speaking on a high simply because of his contagious energy. Aside from being extremely enjoyable, it was an awesome study in the importance of presentation style and crowd interactivity.

From a business standpoint, the person I wanted to see was Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. He’s a little shy and a little nervous and a little uncomfortable on stage, but it’s been a really, really long time since I felt inspired by a CEO and I really needed that. I needed to hear a leader talk about something that was meaningful and compelling and touchingly human. His difficulty entirely relaxing in front of a crowd just made him more authentic.

Intellectually, the person I wanted to hear speak was Chris Anderson (Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, author of “The Long Tail,” and author of the not-yet-released book “Free”). I love hearing what smart people think. And so much of my current study is directly supported and implicitly explained by much of his work, so it’s always a shot in the arm to know that I’m not totally off my rocker.

In the ‘getting great ideas from smart people’ category, the list is too long to count — but the panel highlights for me were:

• Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills
• Beyond Aggregation
• Politics, Technology and Pop Culture
• OpenID, OAuth, Data Portability and the Enterprise
• Cloud Computing: Defending the Undefinable
• Democracy, Design, and the Future of Work

Socially, I was delighted to see my old pals Morgan and Ryan, from my JetBlue days. Ryan is now with WMG, so Morgan is the only one of us left at JB, but it was great to even just get a few minutes with them to see what’s going on in their lives and hear some of the cool stuff they are working on. It was a great reminder that, despite the fact that I in no way miss New York, I do miss my friends there.

And that’s not even starting in all the people I got to meet face-to-face after reading their blogs and/or emailing with them. All very cool.

Now, Lessons Learned:

Happily, I followed all the advice and not only wore comfortable shoes, but the first two days I wore my sneakers with my inserts. Amazingly enough, my feet were really pretty good all four days.

Room A in the Austin Convention Center is about 86,000 miles away from the hub of Interactive activity on the 4th floor. You have to walk through Montana to get there. It takes forever.

Whoever designed the elevator/escalator/stairs situation at the Austin Convention Center needs to be shaken until his teeth rattle. Seriously, dude, were you on crack?

There is no good solution for the electronics situation at SXSW. They provide machines at several public stations, which is nice. (Though, they only have them at ACC and not at the Hilton, which is not as nice.) But if you are a writer, you really need your own. But when the battery dies, there aren’t enough plugs to go around. All in all, we were all struggling with the same problems. No real resolution unless someone builds a 16 hour battery.

Food options are great if you’re not ridiculously broke from trying to get a new business off the ground. If you are, then eating shredded wheat out of a ziplock bag in your purse has to make do.

If you arrive at ACC before 9:00 a.m. each day, not only do you get rock star parking, but you get plenty of time to get some coffee, get settled, catch up on email, and re-do your schedule for the day for the 12th time.

So, that’s all of the direct stuff. I’ll spend the next couple of days distilling several of the things that came up in more detailed posts. My mind is racing, but my body is wiped.

And particularly at a time when so many people are suddenly finding themselves facing (potential) layoffs, it is often the opportunity to explore making a change. So for people thinking about making this change, I have a few stock recommendations to make:

1. Join The Project Management Institute
Not only join it, but list it on your resume as a Professional Affiliation. Joining PMI provides value in several areas: it bolsters your credibility to be a member of the organization that is regarded as the standard-bearer for the industry; membership automatically subscribes you to PMI’s regular publications, which are great learning tools for practitioners; it provides networking opportunities via local chapters in your area or field-specific Special Interest Groups (SIGs); and it provides discounts on training materials, events and certification tests. All in all, someone who is trying to break into project management cannot afford not to join PMI. Of course, as with anything else, it is not just enough to join PMI, but to actually take advantages of the resources they have to offer.

And an added bonus, if you are a student at all, you are eligible for the student discount on membership, which brings the cost down to a very affordable $30 per year.

2. Start Studying
Increasingly, local community colleges are offering courses in project management as part of their business programs. If that’s not an option for you, then look online for programs that cover project management basics to get you started. Beyond that, be sure you are reading the publications PMI sends you, and find online blogs and publications specific to project management that you can make a habit of reading. (See the Project Management section of my links page for specific examples.) Like all disciplines there is a special “language” project managers use. In order to convince someone that you can walk the walk, you must first show them that you know enough to talk the talk. So find a mentor you can learn from, attend networking events (which you should always be doing, anyway) so that you can hear about other people’s experiences, and give yourself the chance to start working on your elevator pitch. It’ll take time and tweaking to get it right, so better to practice over cocktails than to wait until you’re in a job interview.

3. Get Certified
Almost anyone breaking into project management is immediately faced with the daunting discovery that getting a PMP requires years of work experience in the field before you are eligible to take the test. Yet a surprising number of people do not realize that the CAPM, the Certified Associate Project Manager, test does not require anywhere near the same experience (not to mention that it’s an easier and shorter test) – in fact, your experience can be as a member of a project team instead of the leader. And don’t worry about finding CAPM-specific study and training resources. Use those designed for the PMP. The test is made up from the same database of questions used to construct the PMP, there are just fewer of them, and they are basically limited to the text of the PMBOK, instead of relying on as many scenario-based questions.

(Quick note here: the current PMBOK standard is version 3.0. The newest version just came out at the first of the year, and is version 4.0. If you expect to take your test prior to this summer, you will want to target 3.0 before it is phased out. But if you do not expect to get to the test before the second half of the year, then get the materials to prep for the 4.0 test. There are enough changes in terminology that you’ll be better off if you are sure to prep for the version of the test you will be taking.)

And while the CAPM is definitely the “junior” certification, it demonstrates both your commitment to your transition as well as a basic grasp of project management fundamentals. Even better, the nation-wide salary average between CAPMs and PMPs is actually very small.

4. Re-write Your Resume
As I’ve said before, throughout my career I have been a project manager, even though there were many times that was not actually my title. So part of what my resume has to reflect is that I have gained project experience in each role that I have held. It is entirely reasonable to assume, that if you have spent a decade in most any professional field, you have probably developed more project management experience than you may realize. What’s even more important to understand is that, as soon as you start studying and learning about the formal steps involved in project management, that you’ll begin to recognize patterns in your previous projects that help you understand why some failed and others succeeded.

So start a list: list each position you’ve held, and then under that, list each specific project that you actually managed or participated in. Remember: a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. So an IT Manager who built out a NOC in a data center, or a teacher who developed and rolled out a new curriculum across a school district, or an office manager to developed and deployed a new hire on-boarding process, or an HR specialist who crafted and launched a new benefits program are all examples of project leaders, and in almost no case would that person have previously held a job with “project manager” in the title.

Once you have this list, use it to start building a functional resume. Even if you don’t end up using this in a job hunt, it will be a worthwhile exercise for you to understand just how much project management experience you really do have. (Though, in reality, it is not at all uncommon for project managers to use functional resumes, specifically because it is a great way to focus our readers to the experience we most want them to see.)

A cautionary note: project management is most often associated with two very specialized fields: information technology and construction. And while these two fields are highly specialized, they are most definitely not the only ones that use project management and hire project managers (or hire managers with project management expertise). Business Process Improvement projects are one of the most common types of non-IT/construction projects that managers execute, so don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you’ve never lead a team through testing use cases for deploying a CRM that you do not have any project management experience. It comes in all forms, and — along with managing people and daily operations — is usually one of the fundamental requirements of any manager, in any position.

One last word of advice: as the economy terrifies (or forces) companies into laying off their staff, the market is awash with highly experienced project managers, including the always-bright-and-shiny PMPs. If what you really want is to get into the field, then don’t get discouraged. Your expertise in another field is something you want to use to your advantage, not hide from. Businesses seek out employees that can provide value, and while there is great value in effective project management, the trick is to show how several years in a specific field or industry can help make you a better project manager. Maybe it means finding the ideal niche market, e.g. a teacher leaving a school district to work as a project manager for an educational software firm or textbook publishing house; or a career HR Benefits professional leaving in-house back office functions to work at as a project manager for Charles Scwabb; etc.

There are lots of options, but as you work on re-branding yourself, don’t put so much effort into demonstrating project management experience that you short-change the rest of your experience.

In John’s case, part of what made that such an addictive cocktail was his demeanor: John is a very mild-mannered, soft spoken, introverted person. He embodies a very Confucian-type ethic of quiet, steadfast leadership. As a reasonably quiet person, he is someone you often have to silence yourself to listen to — which ultimately means that he gets your undivided focus. John projects a sense of serenity and calm, even in the eye of the storm, and he is masterful about sharing that sense of calm with those around him.

Of course, the irony is that John would probably laugh at that description of him. But the fact is that, particularly in chaotic, dynamic or even out-right dysfunctional environments, someone like John functions as a sanity touchstone who is often instrumental in helping to keep people focused without burning themselves out. And part of the way in which he accomplishes that is by sharing his sense of focused calm with you, and making you feel like you and your problem is the most important thing in the world.

Never underestimate the astounding impact you can have on someone by spending a few minutes making them feel truly heard, and like their problems are genuinely important to you. I can’t count how many times John’s calm, soothing attention brought me back from the brink of some precipitous (and likely regrettable) behavior. And, even more graciously, he always managed to do it without making me feel judged, which was especially valuable once I calmed down and started feeling a bit stupid for allowing myself to get so worked up. And when he was off-site for a long-term project for the better part of a year, and couldn’t be there for me in person, knowing that I was struggling without his direct support and guidance, he emailed me (ironically, always when I needed it most) to tell me that I was doing a great job, and that he understood and was grateful for the burdens I was carrying with little or no help. Six years later I still have those emails. They are a reminder to me of the value of small gestures.

None of this is to say that John doesn’t get upset or impatient or frustrated (and sometimes even show it), but no matter how rough a day John was ever having, I never saw him turn away someone who was struggling. And once his attention was on them, his calming reassurance was always the elixir they needed to pull themselves back up by their bootstraps, and head back out to tackle whatever big bad monster had just kicked their asses and made them want to crawl into a hole.

People who didn’t have that relationship with John often wondered what it was about him that bred such intense affection and loyalty among those of us who did, and the answer is deceptively simple: anytime our faith in ourselves was the most bruised, battered and questionable, John’s faith in us and our abilities helped to restore our confidence and help us face the world again. It was an amazing gift, and one that I work every day to emulate.

Related Boss Lessons
• Lesson #2: Own Your Priorities (Robert)
• Lesson #3: Don’t Get Emotional (Dave)

This then tied back to an article I read a few days ago by local Austin entrepreneur, Josh Baur, about his approach to using LinkedIn and numerous conversations I have with my husband on who he feels he should and shouldn’t link to (and why) on both LinkedIn and Facebook. This got me thinking about the value and application of the social networking phenomenon.

As a tech industry entrepreneur, my mentor noted that his interest in social networking was really the enterprise applicability: how do you use Web2.0 (which, to be sure, is much, much more than JUST social networking) for the advancement and development of existing businesses, and what new businesses emerge once there is this type of disruptive technology in the marketplace? Valid and interesting questions, to be sure, and ones that — also as a tech industry professional — I am also passionate about. However, as I pointed out to my friend, there is also the plain old social networking value in them as well. And even those of us who approach this space, first and foremost, as our business, still find value in the social side.

Which brings me back to the question: what is the value of social networking?

For my friends who play Mob Wars on Facebook while sitting in their offices on endless, mind-numbing conference calls, the argument could be made that it is brain candy that helps them get through the most painfully tedious part of their day.

For my friends and associates who build businesses in this market space, they’d probably acknowledge that — whatever personal enjoyments they get out of any given solution — it’s real value to them is a whole new avenue of entrepreneurial opportunity.

For my late adopter friends who use LinkedIn for their professional profiles, but shun Facebook as too “young” or too easy to have something minor come back to haunt you later (after all, in a 24/7 linked-in world, content never truly goes away), they’ve acquiesced in minor areas for the sake of professional value only.

For me, I have found a very simple, straight-forward value above all else: I live more than 1500 miles away (in any direction) from the majority of my friends and family. When I first left Sonoma County in March 2005 for New York City, it wasn’t long before that daily chatter of ‘what’s going on in my life’ ran silent with the people that I loved. Not the big news or the important developments in most cases, but the ordinary banality of daily life that helps keep you feeling connected to the people you care about. That type of idle small talk between friends (many of whom were co-workers I saw on a daily basis) is ultimately impossible to maintain long distance, because no amount of free cell phone minutes means talking to people every day.

So I have found that the value to Twitter and Facebook is that it keeps me feeling like a part of the daily lives of my friends and my father (who I also managed to get on Facebook). I can cheer someone on when they pass their PMP exam, or express sympathy to a friend who is working from home for the day because their kid fell out of the tree house and broke their arm, or offer advice (or an opportunity to vent) to someone who is having a bad day. Most of those aren’t big enough things that I would have known about them now that I am not working with someone every day, but they are part of what I view my role of a friend to be. And they are the things I missed being able to do (and have done for me) when I first moved to New York and away from my loved ones back in 2005.

Sure, like Joshua Baer says in his article, I am fastidious about keeping my LinkedIn profile up-to-date; ditto with JobFox and Naymz (though neither of them are as big as LinkedIn). Unlike him, I am more generous with my connection policy on LinkedIn, but part of that is because I am a person who picks up and moves to new cities more often than most, and one of the best ways to have access to new jobs is by having connections on LinkedIn that can grant me access to less visible job markets in cities where my personal network is weaker.

On Facebook I am pickier. I completely appreciate the concern of my husband and other friends that there is a lot of opportunity for embarrassment anytime you overly mix non-work friends and your work-based friends and colleagues (a fact of which I am often reminded when I see some of the pictures uploaded or status notes edited by some of my younger, hard-partying friends). So I am more careful with Facebook connections.

On Twitter, I am somewhere in-between. I have far fewer friends on Twitter, and even among the ones who are, most don’t do that much updating. But as Twitter gains popularity, there are organizations, professional affiliations, businesses, thought leaders and political/social groups that I follow, and I find some of them use it well and help keep me current on some of what they are doing.

So, to answer my question, the value of social networking is in the network itself. Just like in real life — much as the lines often blur (especially for workaholics) — there are some aspects of my life that are reserved for friends and others that are reserved for work. And while there is often considerable over-lap (after all, all of the closest friends I’ve had as an adult I met at one job or another), there are still times and places where it’s best to keep the two separate. While that may be difficult to do in a 24/7 socially networked world, it is still possible. And sometimes a little necessary.