Science & social networks

I discovered today the social web site from O'Reilly. This is a social network designed for people working for IT. There are some nice features such as generating a FOAF file, printing a resume,etc...


There are more and more such social web site dedicated to networking. I like to use:

• LinkedIn (easy to find people, many features are free)


• OpenBC (prints a nice path with pictures of the contacts of your contacts)


• academici (Same as OpenBC, but designed for the academic world)


• In France, there are Viaduc (many features requires a subscription) and 6nergies (a little bit messy...)


• Young scientifics may also be interested in YEBN which is also as a linkedin group


• ...

I always have problems to ask my contacts to accept those invitations. Most non-IT people I known (where are historians, biologists, artists... ?) don't see what can be the benefits of joining such network ("I know my friends, why should I list them on this big-brother-web site" ?). Moreover, people don' wan't to build as much social networks than there are social web sites. But such site sare great to build work communities, to find skills, to keep contact, to retrieve old friends, to find a postdoc, to find references, etc...

Keywords:
social
networks
community
business
contacts
networking
foaf