Why has the chief of Criterion Capital Partners bought Poolworks, as the firm is known these days? Good question. And the whole story of why it’s taken this long to confirm the identity of the new owner is just plain weird.

Let’s take a deep breath…

Back in June, VZ Networks – the ailing proprietor of Facebook clone StudiVZ and other networks aimed at various demographics – rebranded as Poolworks and announced it would be focusing on its school-age system SchülerVZ, also rebranded as IDPool. (That new site is still only a ‘coming-soon’ affair.)

Then, in September, Poolworks owner Holtzbrinck Ventures surprised everyone by selling the company to the ‘international investment organization’ Vert Capital. You know, Vert? No, me neither. Anyway, Poolworks CEO Stefanie Waehlert was out and almost everything went to Vert, with Holtzbrinck retaining the option of ‘using’ SchülerVZ/IDPool.

Bebo was rumored to be behind Vert, but no-one would confirm it. Meanwhile, nailing down an online presence for Vert – or indeed any references to the company – proved to be very tricky. Then Der Spiegel reported that Levin was the mystery buyer, saying he had kept his identity secret because of an ongoing lawsuit against Bebo by Walker Digital over in the U.S.

That would be the same lawsuit (PDF) in which two patents, supposedly covering functionality such as privacy settings, were asserted against co-defendants Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and MySpace. If this really was a factor, Levin presumably thought Walker Digital would try pulling his new property into the suit if it found out he’d bought it.

All of which brings us to today. Walker Digital must have ended its suit, or be about to, because Levin has finally gone public, in a way. As the eagle-eyed folks over at Deutsche Startups have spotted, the Poolworks properties now list as their authorized representatives Adam Levin, Joseph Nejman and Mike Pope.

At least two of these guys are Criterion Capital men – Levin’s the MD and Pope’s the CFO. So what the heck is going on?

“Vert Capital is its own entity and Criterion is a separate entity,” the spokesman who handled the original announcement of the Poolworks takeover told me on Friday. “People were saying Bebo bought this, but Bebo did not purchase VZ Networks. There’s overlap in terms of personnel, but there are two different capital structures, two different sets of investors.”

“Now, will they look at any kind of synergies based on the fact that Adam owns stakes in both? Perhaps, but at the time it was very much overblown.”

So, does Vert Capital have any other activities, apart from running Poolworks/VZ Networks? “A few”, apparently, and we should look out for announcements of those “shortly”.

I have a feeling we’ve not heard the last of this tale. Here are my outstanding questions:

• Was the patent suit really the reason for all this secrecy?
• Are the Poolworks properties going to be merged with Bebo?
• And last but not least, what on earth is happening with Bebo anyway? Seriously, the last thing coming out of Bebo that I can find is a post thanking fans for generating 100,000 likes on, um, the site’s Facebook page.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past
• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• Facebook’s tactical retreat on privacy

The social network went offline Monday night, prompting this from Michael Birch…

Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people. #RIPbebo – keep sharing that luv!

— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) January 30, 2012

But, through the site remains offline, a spokesperson for Criterion Çapital Partners (CCP), which acquired Bebo from AOL (NYSE: AOL), tells paidContent:

“They were doing an aggressive set of updates that put the site down and they are working to get it back up. They definitely are not going out of business – they actually have continued to reinvest in the platform.”

The company is profitable, the spokesperson said.

Hold the press (too late for that), Bebo should be coming back in a matter of hours. #LongLiveBebo

— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) January 30, 2012

AOL bought Bebo from Birch and co-owners for an over-the-top $850 million. Since being sold to CCP, Criterion has slowed but not reversed Bebo’s traffic decline. It enlisted Hi5 co-founder Akash Garg and Xbox co-founder Kevin Bachus as it set about re-investing in technology upgrades, while Birch returned to re-invest and act as an advisor. It has also redesigned.

SeeSaw, the UK VOD service which CCP bought a majority of in summer 2011, recently went offline.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• Facebook’s tactical retreat on privacy
• Will Standardizing the Cloud Cause Clarity or Confusion?

But it nonetheless represents a major, perhaps desperate, effort to turn the company around by wooing back the man who started it. Birch obviously has a lot of money after selling the company to AOL in 2008. The deal never panned out for AOL, which couldn’t compete with Facebook and later unloaded the social network for less than $10 million to Criterion Capital Partners.

Birch, who launched a political social network called Jolitics.com after selling Bebo, will join Bebo CEO Adam Levin, former Hi-5 CTO, Akash Garg, and Kavin Bachus, the co-creator of Microsoft’s Xbox, who is now serving as chief product officer. So is Bebo going to try to make a serious go of it or is this team still in the market to sell? Om reported that there were many interested buyers looking at the price tag, somewhere between $20 and $25 million, but Levin has been telling reporters that the company is not looking to sell.

Despite the company ownership changing hands a few times, Bebo still has a solid audience of an estimated 110 million members, many of them younger users, who are accessing Bebo from mobile devices. Bebo’s mobile traffic has doubled since it was sold and now represents 1.5 billion page views monthly, compared with 7 billion page views on the web currently. It’s still a tall order going up against Facebook and other social networks, but Birch believes he can again work his magic on his baby. ”There is a huge opportunity to re-invent Bebo, to approach social from a different perspective and create a viable alternative to the now established market leaders,” Birch said in a statement.  I think there is still room for social networking competitors that address specific markets but they have to be unique, laser focused and execute extremely well. Birch could bring some of that to Bebo, but it’ll take some serious to work to return Bebo to relevance.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Why Browsers Don’t Matter Anymore
• Google Takes the Open Battle to Apple on Multiple Fronts
• Google Chrome OS: What to Expect

Bebo, which at one time competed with Myspace, was first acquired by AOL (then owned by Time Warner) in March 2008 for $850 million, making the Birches rich beyond belief. Of course, the deal brought down a handful of Time Warner/AOL executives, including AOL CEO Randy Falco and AOL President and COO Ron Grant.

AOL’s new chief executive, Tim Armstrong, realizing the futility of fighting a losing battle with Facebook, the current darling of social networking set, decided it was time to cut his losses. In June 2010, Bebo was sold for less than $10 million to Criterion Captial Partners, an investment company based in Los Angeles. Adam Levin, the man behind Criterion, brought in Akash Garg, formerly CTO of social networking also-ran Hi5, as CTO and Microsoft-ie Kevin Bachus, the co-creator of the Xbox, as its chief product officer for the equivalent of the web’s ultimate fixer-upper.

Fast-forward to today, and Bebo is ready to be sold for the third time, with the price pegged at somewhere between $20 million to $25 million. Who are the buyers? Two of my sources have said it’s a large media company looking to goose its web presence. In recent weeks, many buyers have come knocking on Bebo’s door, my sources tell me. A Bebo company spokesperson declined to comment.

Large media companies such as Disney and Bertelsmann could use Bebo to boost their efforts in social gaming; after all, that’s the new form of entertainment. Despite a decline in fortunes, the site is said to have around 110 million monthly visitors, enough for someone looking to give their web fortunes a boost. Stay tuned for more details on buyers.

Traffic Data source: Compete.com

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Why Browsers Don’t Matter Anymore
• Google Takes the Open Battle to Apple on Multiple Fronts
• Google Chrome OS: What to Expect

The First Crop

The ClamCase was one of the first out of the gate with the concept, but they haven’t been able to make the leap to actually producing units yet. ClamCase’s creators have pegged Fall 2010 as the timeframe for actually shipping the hard-shell keyboard case, but no concrete details have emerged.

Two other more recent competitors look poised to beat them out the gate in terms of putting devices into the hands of actual consumers. The first is the Sena Keyboard Folio, a high-end leather option retailing for $149.99 ($129.99 if you pre-order), and the second is the very similar Kensington KeyFolio, which trades real leather for faux, and retails for much less at $99.99. Neither has actually come to market, but both are available for pre-order.

Why It’s Needed

I’m excited about the arrival of the keyboard case, as it means I’ll soon be able to actually use my iPad to do work on the train comfortably, without having to figure out some way to affix the iPad itself to the seat in front of me, since my stand and keyboard together won’t fit on the meal tray. That’s an incredibly specific situation, it’s true, but it’s representative of the more general problem of using the iPad on the go.

How The Keyboard Case is a Game Changer

If keyboard cases can solve this problem, it’ll have huge ramifications not only for the iPad itself, but for all tablet computing. Apple, with its staunch dedication to ever-simpler interfaces and less buttons, will never admit that a tablet with an integrated keyboard could be successful, but its competitors could take advantage if they can find a way to make such a design work. It’s a better idea than just throwing more and more 7-inch devices at the problem.

Apple would do best to go the route of scrapping the keyboard dock altogether (extremely limited, and terrible for use while in motion), and probably the official iPad case itself, too (I bought one at launch and literally haven’t touched it since I removed it after the first day). In the place of both accessories, it should offer a case that integrates a Bluetooth Mac keyboard, slightly redesigned to include the special function keys currently found on the keyboard dock.

Building the Accessory Bridge

The keyboard case may be treading softly as it comes to market, but make no mistake, this one’s got legs. At the very least, it’ll help bridge the gap between the notebook and the tablet for users who are having a hard time adjusting, which will significantly benefit the bottom line of Apple and other manufacturers getting into the market.

What do you think? Will the keyboard case actually make a big difference in the tablet game?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why Apple Hasn’t Sewn Up the Tablet Market — Yet
Transient Apps: The Consumer Influence on Enterprise Mobility, Part 2
Rogue Devices: The Consumer Influence on Enterprise Mobility, Part 1

Now comes word that AOL is getting rid of Bebo, and may have sold it to a private capital investor for somewhere between $2.5 million and $10 million. That would put it in the same category as The New York Yankees’ $39.5 million deal with pitcher Carl Pavano — hope and hype that ended in heartburn.

If the reports are indeed true, Randy’s Folly cost the company a whopping $840 million of much needed cash. Randy being Randy Falco, the clueless executive who took AOL to the brink of extinction before someone woke up and brought in Tim Armstrong to make a miracle.

Armstrong is trying to move AOL away from its access-centric revenue stream by building a content-centric company. Thanks to the acquisition of Weblogs Inc. (way back when), AOL now sits on a gold mine of web brands, Engadget being the most well known. The company has also embarked on an expansive and ambitious strategy with new programs like Seed.

At the D8 conference, when Armstrong was asked “What is the future of the company?”  he replied, “If I had to describe it in one word, I think it’s content, and I think it’s content because there’s an opportunity to marry what the content’s already done with what the content can do.” Given that I’ve viewed AOL’s content strategy over the past year and a half as a smart one, I can’t say I disagree with Armstrong’s approach.

We are in the middle of a big media shift, which means some of the traditional brands are going to fall by the wayside. New ones will emerge. AOL can be home to many of them — whether they’re homegrown or come via a shopping spree.

As I have often said, we’ve entered an era of too much data (including news). From this data we need to derive information, and to this information we need to offer context. That context is social and local. These are not easy tasks, mind you; they require the resources of a technology company — and thankfully AOL has plenty of those.

This is precisely the time AOL should be making aggressive acquisitions — not Associated Content, but companies like Foursquare and Gowalla — and use them to build a new class of “media entities” that revolve around location and social. As I wrote earlier, I see such services as the next iteration of gourmet magazines and retail guides. They can also help AOL realize its local ambitions.

Just as back in the day, AOL viewed weblogs as a new media entity,  Armstrong must peer into the future and rethink what media is, including getting rid of notions such as content created by content farms such as Associated Content. It should also explore a new opportunity being tapped certain startups: the marriage of content and commerce sans traditional advertising.  Good examples include New York-based Thrillist, which bought JackThreads and San Francisco’s women-oriented content company, Sugar Inc., which in turn bought FreshGuide. In a world awash with cheap page views, it’s the premium experiences that result in premium advertising dollars and commerce-related revenues.

But thanks, in part, to Bebo, AOL doesn’t have a lot of cash on hand – roughly $262 million — which limits what Armstrong can do. Now imagine if Armstrong had that $840 million that was wasted on buying Bebo back in his coffers; he could easily go about building a brand-new AOL. Instead he needs to take measured steps and worry about paying the price of someone else’s stupidity.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com

AOL, a little over two years after paying $850 million for popular UK social networking site Bebo, has admitted in an internal memo to employees that the business is “declining” and that it simply doesn’t have the resources to invest in the site while waiting for its numbers to turn around. The memo says that the company will be actively looking for buyers for the Bebo unit, and expects to make a final decision as to its fate by the end of next month. AOL plans to file financial details with UK regulators tomorrow stating that it’s “currently evaluating strategic alternatives with respect to Bebo,” which could include a sale or shutdown of the company.

More than anything else, this move by AOL makes it obvious that a) the purchase of Bebo was an expensive mistake, and b) Facebook has effectively won the social networking war. The text of the memo is as follows:

The strategy we set in May 2009 leverages our core strengths and scale in quality content, premium advertising and consumer applications, positioning us for the next phase of growth of the Internet. As we evaluate our portfolio of brands against our strategy, it is clear that social networking is a space with heavy competition, and where scale defines success.

Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking.

AOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo and the company’s current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010.

When AOL, then still part of Time Warner, bought Bebo in 2008, AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco talked about how the acquisition was just like Microsoft’s investment in Facebook in that it was “the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.” Falco said the purchase would allow the online company to leverage its social platform across its combined global audience and position it “to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

That obviously never came to pass. The advertising business AOL was relying on got sucked into the economic downturn along with everything else, and there were rumors as far back as last year that AOL was looking to sell the company. At the time it was acquired, Bebo said it had more than 40 million members and was one of the leading social networks in the UK, as well as number three in the U.S. The company said that its users were heavily engaged, viewing an average of 78 pages a day (although there were reports that the network had the worst uptime record of any major social media site).

Former Bebo CEO and AOL President Joanna Shields left to join Facebook joined Facebook several days ago as VP of sales and business development in Europe.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Hans Gerwitz

BBC sites are responsible for 40 percent of the visits to iPlayer, according to Hitwise.

The BBC will make viewing of its on-demand videos more social by adding Facebook, Twitter and Bebo integration into its widely popular iPlayer online video application, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. The addition of more social sharing features has the potential to greatly increase usage and viewer engagement for the iPlayer, which continues to post record numbers month after month.

In an interview with the Telegraph, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said that social sharing features would be built into the iPlayer 3.0 beta, which is set to launch soon. According to Huggers, partnerships with the various social networking sites have already been signed, but the Beeb has been waiting until the release of the newest version of its player before making the new features available to users.

The integration will allow users to easily share what they are watching or listening to with friends and contacts on the social networking site. But for the integration to work, they will have to first register an account and log into the BBC iPlayer before adding their Facebook, Twitter and Bebo information to that account. Once that information is stored, they will no longer have to log into the services separately to post updates to their account from the iPlayer.

We’ve long believed that media companies can benefit by adding more social features around online video viewing. As we’ve seen in the case of CNN’s integration with Facebook at the Obama inauguration, social networks can do a lot to drive interest in online video, particularly for live events.

While the iPlayer could see a boost from social sharing, the video catchup service is doing just fine on its own, posting record numbers (again!) for the month of February. The iPlayer site was visited by an average of 1.4 million people per day , with 3.5 million requests for TV and radio programs during the month. But the most telling stat might be the amount of time viewers spent on the site. iPlayer viewers spent more than an hour — 64 minutes — catching up on TV programs online.

Related content on NewTeeVee: Watching the iPlayer Around The World: BBC, Meet VPN

Related content from GigaOM Pro: Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking? (subscription required)

stock.xchng by bigevil600

While I don’t have a crystal ball, here are some developments that I think are worthy of our attention and will affect how we do things in the social mediasphere over the next few years. Many of the things on this list will not be news to the very well-informed social media consultant types who live and breathe this stuff. But for the rest of us, there are seeds of opportunity here that should not be missed.

1. MySpace: CEO Leaves; MySpace will die. Last year, I was telling my clients “We are cautiously optimistic that MySpace (GigaOM Pro company profile) will make a comeback because their new CEO is a Facebook co-founder.” Scratch that. I think MySpace is about to go the way of Friendster, although it is still a player in the entertainment space. Because Facebook doesn’t allow flexbility and customization, I’m going to miss MySpace. But now I wonder: Who is going to be the next MySpace? Virb? Bebo? (And don’t underestimate LinkedIn.)
2. Virtual Goods: Insane, but insanely popular. The creation and selling of virtual goods and gifts makes absolutely no sense to people who just use the Internet as a basic communications tool. Try telling someone who isn’t really into Facebook that they could buy a virtual bouquet of flowers for 99 cents and send them to a friend — they’d look at you like you were mad. But with virtual goods as an industry already raking in the billions of dollars worldwide and over a billion in the U.S. alone (source: “Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market, 2009 – 2010″), how can anyone ignore them? I’m not saying everyone needs to make and use virtual goods, but there is opportunity here for both marketing and revenue. Have you even thought about how you might be able to leverage virtual goods? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): How the Next Zynga Could Reinvent Social Gaming
3. Gaming: Not just for kids anymore. I think the very fact that the largest player base of passive online games is women flies in the face of the typical view that games are for kids. According to Nielsen Entertainment in August 2009, of the 117 million active gamers in the U.S., 56 percent play games online and 64 percent of those online gamers are female. And the revenues generated from online games is enormous and growing. Do not underestimate the power of games and gaming — and not just the marketing and revenue opportunities, but also the learning opportunities as well in the form of fun quizzes and polls. Have you used gaming yet in a social media marketing campaign?
4. Twitter: Still transforming communications. Back in 2008, I wrote about Twitter’s impact on the fundamental ways we communicate and the way new tools and applications are being developed, but it continues to grow and evolve. How has Twitter helped you lately?
5. Niche networks: A marketer’s secret weapon. Whether you choose Ning.com or KickApps or any of the other “white label” customizable social network-building platforms, the concept of creating a “gated”online community that is narrow in focus is smart and potentially powerful. The concept isn’t really that far removed from hosting an online messaging board in the early days of the web. If you held the keys to the gate of a more private, closed or niche community, you had everything from an instant focus group to a band of passionate buzz agents on your hands — if you knew how to properly leverage the community participation. Fast forward to today and the tools ca now give your members integrated communications, networking, publishing and social tools — brilliant. What niche networks are you participating in or do you run?
6. Augmented reality. Sounds sci-fi, but it’s really here. I’m having a hard time describing Augmented Reality to people who haven’t seen it (if you haven’t seen it in action, these infographics from GigaOM might help). The reaction isn’t just “what in the world?” but “who cares about that stuff?” AR uses simply boggle the mind, and I plan to explore more of that in this column soon. I do wish we had a better term for it, though (like “data overlay” or “overscreen view”) so it didn’t have such a sci-fi feel to it. What potential uses for AR are getting you fired up? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Augmented Reality: Lots of Promise, Lots of Hurdles.
7. Google Buzz: Pay attention, even if you don’t care. I am one of the gazillion people who currently do not care about Google Buzz, apart from the fact that just because Google did this it means something in terms of the tools we’ll be using in the coming years. Right now, I feel like Google has the means to just throw tech spaghetti on the virtual walls of our work and lives to see what sticks. Anything it does has major significance and impact, even if it fails. So pay attention as you scratch your head. How is Google Buzz changing the way you communicate, or is it? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Google Buzz’s True Home Is in the Enterprise
8. Mobile: Be there. I don’t know about you, but I consider my iPhone to be a mini computer and Wi-Fi device first and phone a distant second. I’m never normally an early early adopter because I’m too busy to keep up most of the time, but I will be one of the first to buy the iPad, because it looks to me like a bigger iPhone, and I rely on my iPhone in ways I have never relied on my computer or my regular cell phone. My entire concept of connectivity and my access to everything has changed so dramatically since I got a smartphone that I know I can never go back to the old ways. What forays into mobile marketing are on your radar for 2010? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

I could also add the concept of location to this list, but I’ll leave that for another column.

What developments in social media are knocking your socks off?

Photo by stock.xchng user bigevil600

Social networks can help make you a smarter business person, and there’s a lot of corporate value to be found in them. (Did you know that Dell has made over $6 million from Twitter alone?) It’s time to exploit them for your business, and here’s how:

1. Get involved. The only way to use social networks to improve business is to join some sites. LinkedIn is a good start, but you’ll need to do much more if you plan to make your social life profitable. Social networks require participation. If you don’t get involved, you’ll never find value in the social web.

2. There’s more than LinkedIn. There’s little debating that LinkedIn is ideal for those who want to network with other professionals. But Twitter, Facebook and the rest also provide real value to a business person. In many cases, they allow you to find folks you might have otherwise missed offline. They also provide you with a “cheat sheet” of information, like interests and education, that could help you close a deal. For example, I recently got in touch with a local professional who needed some basic tech services. I used Facebook to get to know him and what his interests were. When we finally had a chance to meet, I referenced his love of the New York Yankees and some films we both enjoy to get the conversation started, which may have helped me close the deal.

3. It’s networking, but online. One of the first rules you learn in any business school is to network. It’s not always what you know, it’s who you know. Social-networking sites are ideal for those who want to network. You can use them to get back in touch with old friends, get to know colleagues, or network with other local professionals trying to do the same. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get to know clients when you’re introduced by a mutual acquaintance.

4. Don’t underestimate Twitter’s value. It might not seem like the best choice for a business person at first glance, but after further inspection, you might find that Twitter is a fine networking platform. It’s filled with active members who want to get to know others, and there are far more professionals than you think. And thanks to several third-party Twitter tools, like WeFollow, it shouldn’t take long to find folks in your area you want to target. WeFollow lets you find people based on categories. So if you want to find entrepreneurs, you can. If you want to find marketing professionals in New York, you can do that, too.

Dell, for one, has shown just how important Twitter can be to a company’s bottom line by offering sales through its Twitter feed, listening to what customers are looking for, and telling those followers about available coupons. In the meantime, besides the $6.5 million it’s pulled in from using the site, it’s attracted a whopping 1.5 million followers looking for deals.

5. Join the conversation. Once you join social networks and you know who you want to target, start talking. Get to know what they discuss and join that discussion. Social networking is not about being shy; it’s about being willing to open up in an online world that has stayed anonymous for far too long. That means you’ll need to talk about your interests and topics that others in your social network are engaged in.

6. It’s not about the numbers. Although some believe the more friends or followers you have on your favorite social network, the better, I don’t. If you want to turn your social life into more business, find followers and friends who either improve your relations with the surrounding community or increase your prospects of securing clients. Don’t waste time with big follower numbers. Most times, it’s that core group that will provide the most value. A company in my hometown currently has a little over 200 followers on Twitter. But according to that company’s owner, they’re some of the store’s most reliable customers; when the owner sends out sales information or coupons, these are the folks who are most likely to redeem them. Twitter lets you engage in extremely effective marketing for free.

7. Don’t stick to business. The worst thing you can do on a social network is just talk about business. Remember that many folks want to leave business at the office. Use social networks to find common ground and get to know each other. When you feel comfortable that a relationship is developing, then throw in the business.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I first started using Twitter. I didn’t discuss topics my followers cared about. Instead, I focused all my tweets on the tech business. Some folks stopped following me; others asked me to stop talking about business so much. It was a great wake-up call. Today, I talk about tech and business, but I also discuss other topics that are important to me and my followers.

8. Don’t go overboard. Don’t think that you need to join every new site that crops up. Instead, stick to two to four social networks. By doing so, you can still be on the sites that other folks are on, but you won’t get caught up in trying to update every site you use.

I wish someone had told me this a long time ago. At this point, I belong to well over 35 social networks. They range from the big ones like Facebook to relatively unknown services like Plurk and Identi.ca. For a while, I tried to keep all those profiles up-to-date. But it became too time-consuming and I was forced to scale back. Today, I maintain active updates on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. Everything else is left dormant.

9. Share what you know. Social networks provide value because users can share their expertise. If you’re into stamp collecting, let us know. If you’re an expert in derivatives, tell us about it. Don’t simply regurgitate what you see in so many other places on the web. Although I write about technology for a living, I’m actually quite knowledgeable in financial topics and baseball history. I was surprised to see how many of my social-networking buddies have those same interests, and it’s helped us form a better professional bond.

10. Remember your employer. Anything and everything you say is a direct reflection on those who employ you. Don’t use profanity. Don’t say nasty things about the competition. Just as you would at any dinner meeting, represent your company well. Companies have worked with PR companies for years to disseminate only the information they want shared, and today, any employee can say anything with a click of a button. If you plan to help your business through social networks, remember that your job could be on the line if you say the wrong thing.

These are just some tips to being a smarter, social businessperson. If
you have any others to share, let us know in the comments below.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

Social Media in the Enterprise

Image courtesy of Flickr user chanchan222.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Social Media in the Enterprise
• Examining the rise of crowd labor platforms in 2012