I have been 'into' social networking websites ever since they were conceived, and in fact am involved in the development of another platform on which people will be able to network, although rest assured it will have no similarity whatsoever with Big Think.

 I attended an excellent seminar by the ex head of Knowledge Management of the BBC, Euan Semple, and worked on a wiki for the NHS of which he was a member. I recently went to an excellent all-day seminar in London by Purple Internet, called "The 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing", where they spoke of using websites such as Facebook and particularly MySpace to generate income for one's company, and the benefits of creating one's own MySpace page and getting "friends" one can later turn into "customers". All very good, all very exciting.

 However, the reality is very different. These sites have become so interesting that IT security managers around the country are barring access left right and centre. A few months ago I read that 65% of British office workers have no access to MySpace or Facebook in the office, even during their lunchbreaks, because these sites are so addictive that people were simply not doing enough work and were spending hours on the sites, updating their blogs and making more "friends". I am sure the figure is now much higher than 65%.

 Whilst I can understand the thinking behind this logic, it is also a great shame. The ideas by the likes of Purple, about harnessing social networking sites to make your business and your professional network grow, are completely spot on, but at the same time, if access in the workplace is dwindling more and more, then this thinking is being shot in the wing before it has had a chance to really take off. This reminds me of how the music industry fought for so long to prevent music download websites, until Apple via iTunes realised that in fact, they should be joining in on the act themselves, and make money out of the technology. Result! But it's taken years for the music industry to cotton on to this. Ditto with P2P (peer-to-peer) to watch TV channels. Subscription channels in particular were trying to shut down websites that provided free feeds to their channels, to surfers who had installed a P2P viewer such as SopCast or PPStream. Now, increasingly, they are using the same technology, with Valencian TV channel Canal 9 (rtvv.es) being a good example - they recommend people install PeerCast in order to get a smoother picture.