Social What?

Yesterday, I had dinner with a blogger-friend and we talked social networking among other things. What is better, Facebook or Linkedin? Does Foursquare destroy your privacy, allowing people who shouldn't know, know that you are not at home? And, Twitter? What the heck does it really do for you? I won't go into all of those issues as they are all fairly large and still waiting to be decided, but the question about Linkedin vs. Facebook does fascinate me. I prefer Linkedin in for professional-only communication while Facebook is my more personal outlet for info. Still, I am finding that more and more of my professional contacts are searching out my Facebook over my Linkedin pages. That kind of makes sense since Facebook is a billion times larger than anything on the planet when it comes to profiles and internet communications, but do I really want my business associates to know about my family, vacations, funny faces I may have made, personal interests, etc? This a wacky world where communications are as instant as thought. While at dinner, I Foursquared my location and it went to Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin so my "world" knew I was having chili with Shoshana at Hugo's. Bizarre as hell and what is the point? Well, I work with Hugo's so it got the name out and that was my personal and professional reason for doing it. Most people who use FourSquare are probably just "sharing" and bored so they go through the exercise of telling people where they are constantly. I gotta admit as a bonified gossip and Yenta, I love these forms of instant communication and know that this all has a movement and power that is far-reaching and probably never-ending. Will it all be saturated and then fade away? Very doubtful as it mutates faster than any virus on the planet. For now, I am blogging my ideas and will send across the internet so that you can see what is on my mind...for now.