Can you help me? A friend wants to do her next column on online social networks, and I have a presentation to give at Internet Retailer that will include a bit about social networks. Problem is, we don't have any good case studies on people having success in achieving their objectives with social networks.

My journalist friend wants to round out her story with professionals who've used them and ideally gotten benefit from them, and I'd like to include a case study in my presentation.

Any leads? Please comment, or send to blogsavant@gmail.com

Thankfully, Kevin Briody links to a post from Moz Hussain on the MSN Spaces team who discusses the segmentation of Online Social Networking users.

Looks like CareerJournal had something recently as well: Online Social Networks Are Havens for Job Hunters

I don't have any leads, but am interested in your findings.

I'll be posting findings up here for everyone to see...if anyone sends me anything! :)

You'd think if you asked this question in one of those social circles, the users would love to pass on good news about what they are doing. However, you might get some urban legends about successes, just like you hear about MLM businesses.

Just me wondering...

Problem is, I can't just go ahead and email everyone or 'post' like I can here. Bummer. I'll reach out individually, I guess.

I haven't used social networking sites myself. But my experience in using websites where there is a common community interest - eg sporting team, etc - is that it has provided me with some useful contacts but nothing concrete business-wise.

My feeling is that relationships matter beyond the screen. My contacts have developed because I have nurtured them offline. If nothing else they are good social contacts.

I have used SoFlow.com for a few months (it's a social networking site for marketing/ad professionals) and I am finding it helpful just to learn from other people's questions and postings as well as my own on there. I have made a few contacts in areas that interest me as well, but I can't claim any direct business leads or sales per se from it. Not sure if that's what you're looking for or not but figured I'd post.

Dana, I've heard from the gang at Jobster that their beta testing group has had good results finding candidates for hard-to-fill positions (like a Shoe Designer job at Nike) using the Jobster service. I don't have any specifics OK for an article but I'm sure they have an "approved" success story they could share with you.

Rate My Baby Pics is a passionate, fast growing baby photo-sharing community that attracts devoted users along with providing the communications' tools for the building of an Interest-based network focused on a shared passion.

We use the power of relationships to create a viral community of users who share information, network around specific interests with each other for fun, and personal and professional reasons. We make finding friends with similar interests easy.

The concept:
� A site for parents to register and show off their baby pictures.
� Visitors to the site vote for their favorite pictures in different categories.
� An interest-based network or community focused on a shared passion is born through communications' platforms for members to interact and communicate with each other.
� All content is user generated.

This is truly a �network� where moms/parents can find other moms/parents with similar likes, issues & values. Rate My Baby Pics is a place to get and to give support, a place to share information while being fun, entertaining and relaxing.

You might say we're a next-generation social networking site. We take Social Networking principles such as contacts, viral, photos, support networks and merge them with the needs of women. As studies indicate, women are better at joining groups, participating and telling friends, resulting in a social and viral network with enormous growth potential. As for the money part, considering the site launched in January, a major Fortune 500 company has agreed to advertise and test the site. Plus at the moment we're generating advertising revenue...it exceeds outgoing marketing expenditures.

I've used linkedin for 3 years and used it very successfully in my last job search. Highly recommended.

You might like to speak to David Teten or Scott Allen of Virtual Handshake (http://thevirtualhandshake.com). They have a book coming out on social networking and I believe they already gathered a bunch of examples on such success stories. I know them if you would like an introduction.

Yes, I've had success with LinkedIn and Ryze. Several of the people I met referred business my way. I'll be glad to talk to you about my experience. Also, it may be a good idea to contact Adrian Scott, founder of Ryze. He should have more than a few case studies.