Focused, But Blurry

Social Networking tools are definitely confusing lots of people trying to get their heads around things. The issue we're seeing is that we're watching the evoution of something while zoomed in all the way (focused) when in reality we need to step way, way back (blurry) to get a better picture of things.

We don't need convincing on the value of social networks, since we know and experience that daily. We do, however, need a bit more promised on the other end of the spectrum -- the "What's In It For Me" end. Once we see the forest and not the trees, we're making progress. Here's two different angles on that same problem.

News.com has an interesting piece on a body of work conducted by David Hsu. Mr. Hsu's study examined the pre-money valuations of a selection of startups and compared the offered valuations to the accepted offers.

Here's part of what they said:

In the minds of entrepreneurs working to expand their fledgling technology companies, the intangibles brought to the table by their investors--experience and contacts--often are worth a lot more than money itself, David Hsu, a Wharton management professor, writes in a paper scheduled for publication in the August issue of the Journal of Finance. The paper is titled, "What Do Entrepreneurs Pay for Venture Capital Affiliation?"

If a company borrows from a bank and the terms are similar, it does not matter what bank it gets the money from. In seeking venture capital investment, however, a company is hungry not just for cash but also for the venture firm’s "reputation and access to a network of relationships--with customers, suppliers, investments bankers and other important constituents in the universe that the entrepreneur cares about," Hsu says.

Source: News.com, "How VCs earn their keep"

At the same time, there is some debate (again) going on regarding the explicit, analog, (and now) messy nature, as David Weinberger notes similarities between YASNSes and autism (this has to be one of my favorite reflections, btw):

So, sure, the “Type in a percentage of friendship” box in ASNs is stupidly reductive. But, wrt ASNs it will be fascinating to watch how we insist on complicating the simple, ambiguating the precise, and smudging the edges of the discrete.

Source: Many 2 Many, "The insistent messiness of humans"

From these two different views on social networks, we're seeing the efforts of different individuals to look broader, not closer. It's going to take a lot more of this to get to a point where we can PROVE to someone What's In It For Them. Right now, we're in danger of expecting too much and delivering too little.