We Need More Booty..Business Booty, That Is

Apparently, while there's a lot of teenage folks using social networking services, there's not a lot of teenage folks making these same social networking services profitable. Darn whippersnapping freeloaders. This via eWeek:

"Personal-relationship facilitator Friendster is reportedly preparing to get chummy with the business crowd by rolling out an enterprise version of its social media network.

Dave Kochbeck, director of operations, reportedly discussed the move at a Novell/Horn group media roundtable earlier in the week, telling attendees that the network plans to make its platform available to other businesses. "It has to be about more than getting teenagers laid," he said, according to SiliconValleyWatcher."

Is that actually part of the business plan, I wonder? Like, is it on a white board somewhere? "Must be more than getting teenagers laid." Huh. The problem with most social networking services is the problem of trusted or trusting identities. You don't know if it's Uncle Joe you're talking to, or Uncle Joe the CrackHead Pedophile. However, again from eWeek, I learned that Opinity and identitycommons will be teaming up to address this problem:

"Two organizations are joining forces to offer a service that enables Internet users to establish identities and reputations, allowing others to decide whether they are the kind of people they want to get to know or do business with.

Opinity Inc., a San Jose, Calif. company that started an online personal reputation service, and Identity Commons, a membership organization based in Emeryville, Calif. that allows people to create and maintain trusted online identities, have started working on a combined service offering, Opinity CEO Ted Cho said Thursday. The partnership will allow Opinity users to establish i-names while Identity Commons members will be able to access Opinity reputation services."

It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Related: Social networking is the new "It" emerging technology. Here's a few of the players:

• Yahoo My Web 2.0: Still in beta, this service is starting to turn a few heads.
• Multiply.com: Excellent - you can store a boatload of images here.
• LinkedIn.com: A job search engine with a gentle splash of social networking goodness.
• del.icio.us: Share and tag your favorite sites - rinse, repeat.