Freiheit: That's about on a par with saying that blogs only matter to those with something important to say. Social network websites are selling themselves short if they cater solely for the needs of people who want to *make* contacts, and ignore people who want to do interesting stuff with their *existing* circle of friends.

I already keep in touch with my friends and family through my blog, their blogs, bulletin boards, email, text messaging, instant messaging, webcams, and even the phone. We keep each other up to date about what's going on in our lives, we coordinate activities, we share photographs. What I really want to know is, what can something like Orkut give me that I don't already have?

If it's just the ability to find out that my pal Richard is two handshakes away from Dave Grohl, then that's cool, but it's still a "so what?" for me. The theory behind social networks is fascinating, and some of the stuff they were doing with Club Nexus at Stanford (http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/social/social.pdf) is very cool. But so far all the buzz I've seen for Orkut makes it look like a) just another way to congratulate yourself on how many friends you have, and b) a fabulous way for Google to extract value from thousands of people's personal data and social connections.

What's in it for ME?