To many,LinkedIn, Facebook, andMySpaceare diversions, just like writing a blog. Others take these spaces and activities very seriously. Last weekThe Wall Street Journal reported that Barack Obama has more than 1,700,000 Facebook friends, but that John McCain has only 350,000 Facebook friends. There are few efforts more serious than running for President, and Facebook friends have become a metric of who is winning the youth vote and a tool for winning that vote. I recently became a little more active social networker, inspired in part by Dan Scarbrough's founding of aDatacenter DynamicsLinkedIn group. I've had a LinkedIn profile since June 21, 2005. Until last week, however, I had only two connections and was quite happy. I took me only a few hours to complete my long dormant profile and make more than 100 network connections. We all have colleagues who have many more. I sense that social networking will be the way we do much business in the future, as well as an activity made possible only through the smooth functioning of our data centers. For now, though, I'm curious, about how people in the mission critical field are using their social activity sites. Feel free to join myLinkedIn network, or just contact me with your thoughts. As an editor, I guess I'm just naturally curious about how we will exchange information in the future. I believe I am in the vanguard of a number of editors atBNP Mediapleading the case to put Web 2.0 applications, including social networking, to work for our respective industries. If you are not familiar with the business face of social networking sites, join a few groups and see what you think will happen next. And please stay in touch.