Mark, your assertions are spot on. Almost without exception, the "profession-focused" social networking sites are still about the person, not the buusiness - members have individual profiles talking all about themselves through their career, NOT profiles that promote their business; and what if someone gets hired through LinkedIn (it places heavy emphasis on how much it helps you hire and get hired)? How does their current business benefit from that? And how does it benefit the business when they take all their contacts with them? Make no mistake, most so-called business networking sites are NOT benefiting the businesses that pay their members wages. Until the benefits to the business become more clear, they are unlikely to embrace such sites.

We think WeCanDo.BIZ addresses your points, although we are going to the UK market only initially - our home, plus the largest Facebook membership outside of the US.

We think we will be part of the wave towards more niche SN sites which get much closer to providing communities with a specific common interest - sites will proliferate serving the needs of small businesses, gamers, sports fans etc. It seems logical. Facebook has got us into SN, now we start to look for destinations that better serve our requirements -- you wouldn't expect a single TV show or magazine to give you ALL you need in life and so this medium will prove to be no different.

By the way, I see bets on this site that Google will invest in either Plaxo or Facebook to play catch up in the SN space. Perhaps if they want to leapfrog everyone they'll think of providing an entry point to all the specialist SN destinations a user may sign up to, making them easier to reach and providing a single identity to use to log in to each and every one...

Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
www.wecando.biz