Twitter users raging out of frustration and boredom during last week's SXSW conference session when BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy interviewed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is probably not the outcome businesses and organizations have in mind as they adopt new social media tools to manage events and build online communities.

While more than 70 white label social network applications like Ning, Lithium, and KickApps crowd the market, only a handful are differentiating themselves by tying together event management and building online communities. Conference planners are beginning to adopt the new media tools like Twitter to not only help people better connect and share ideas just prior to and during event but as a way to ignite year-round online community vibrancy.

"Across the board people discount the social needs of their customers," said CrowdVine founder Tony Stubblebine of Mill Valley, California. "Conferences are focused on attracting people based on the content of the conference but the people you meet are as strong a draw as the sessions."

In the past two years, there's been a shift in corporate thinking about the value of integrating events and online community building as new technologies have made things like image sharing and finding people easier.

"Five years ago during the first wave there were two types of online communities - tech people looking for answers about how to do things better and faster and end-user customers of custom brands trying to get answers to questions," said Michael Walsh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Leverage Software of San Francisco, Calif. "Now we have tens of millions of kids coming into jobs having experienced communicating with Facebook and then going into companies asking why email and intranets - why not communicate with people through social networks."

Small World Labs, introNetworks, CrowdVine, Leverage Software, and EventVue are among the few companies focused on the new market for integrating one-time conference management with year-round online community building. Meanwhile some bigger names in event management software, like WingateWeb of Lindon, Utah, are slipping a few social networking features to their applications.

Technology conferences and other early adopters of applications that marry community building and event management are demanding features and functions be cutting edge yet very easy to use. Their long shopping lists include real-time community intelligence; video messaging; Twitter integration; search and matching; communication by request;in-network blogging and blog feeds; image uploading; session planning;alert tools; rating and review tools; multiple languages; data portability to other social network platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Bebo; and integration with major registration systems like Experient (formerly Expo Exchange), EventBrite, and RegOnline.

When Kymberlee Weil co-founded introNetworks of Carpinteria, Calif.(DEMO@15) five years ago using technology for social networking was not well understood. "Back then event planners were interested in adding value to attendees at an event and offering something no one else did,it took them a while to realize this is a tool that fosters communications year round" said Weil. "In the last 12 months, social networking has taken off. Now it's expected."

After a year of development, introNetworks recently introduced a smart,