I read a well-balanced article on social networking software by Jane Black in BusinessWeek. No handwringing, no declaiming the end of Western civilization due to loose-moraled hipsters and free agent nation types swapping spit and job leads on the Internet. Does touch on the security flap-doodle that Orkut's now-revamped privacy policies caused a few weeks back.

Also mentioned a peer-to-peer social networking start-up that I had not encountered before:

"WiredReach, a Dallas startup, is trying a different approach. Its system uses peer-to-peer technology to keep users' data safe -- right on their own hard drive. Founder and CEO Ash Maurya says the danger in social networking is uploading such personal information to a centralized server that's "just one hack away" from being exposed. Peer-to-peer technology has no central server. Two users who know each other can search each other's hard drives for, say, a recruiter at IBM or a senior writer at BusinessWeek. If they find a match, they request an introduction. Says Maurya: "We're trying to simulate real-world networking without losing any confidentiality.""