As one of the first 10,000 users, I early on saw the potential of a purely professional social network. It consistently grew in size and user value over the years, however now that everyone is piling on to the LinkedIn bandwagon, the value of LinkedIn personal connections and networks are decreasing at what seems like an accelerating pace. MORE >>

His wife — also a marketer — later explains it to him in under 140 characters, “It’s a social networking tool where you send instant updates to anyone who signs up for them.&# Many of these organized chats happen on a weekly basis and connect you with professionals interested in a similar topic. Share! Be you! MORE >>

But, I by no means consider myself an expert and find that I spend quite a bit of my time building my network skills so I can do this more effectively. When I looked at her first post, I was actually disappointed because it wasn't really about networks and communities. We still have the core human desire to connect. Invite only. MORE >>

Stephen Downes took me to task for my suggestion that collaboration was the optimum type of group work in networks: collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in networks. began to see that co-operation makes more sense as the term to describe working together in a networked  and non-directed relationship. MORE >>

But hopefully 2009 will be the year when that begins to change. As an aside, what finally pushed me to create this series was a great post by Sue Waters' about creating your own personal learning network (PLN). If you care about being relevant and valuable in 2015, you had better be making moves in 2009. So, here goes. MORE >>