And by 101, I don't just mean simple for you to understand; I mean simple for me to explain. I'm not Seth Godin, who recently had a great post about how much he knew about the Net in 1993 (and what he could have/should have done with that info).

Nope, in '93 I was graduating high school, which was a side note to my main activities: girls, beer, boxing, being cool and beer.

How things change. Over the past few years I've joined and played in dozens of social networks. I even got paid $500 dollars just today for helping build a fantastic community for online marketers. Really, they paid me and the money is in my account, just for helping supply (hopefully) quality content. There's a business model to consider, but I digress.

Having played in all these social communities - even if I haven't been doing it for 14 years like the esteemed Mr. Godin, I do have some common-sense thoughts to share with my peers.

If you are in the online marketing business, join most of them. If you are a PR pro, definitely join them all, even if it's just to poke around for a bit and get a lay of the land.

We're communicators by trade, and we need to be as comfortable in Facebook as we are in Word; as relaxed in a niche Ning PR community as we are writing speeches. How do we do this? Time. Error. Success. Flubs, small victories - and then - we slowly gain knowledge we can actually share with clients as actionable advice.

But only if we've been knee-deep and dirty ourselves in those social networks. The "game" analogy as applied to social media is not a bad one in my opinion, and this is definitely not a spectator sport.

Many will fall way to the few

But as I look at the spreadsheet I have tracking my social networks (I really have one), I'm thinking most of those current 19 networks will eventually give way to just a few.

Why, and based on what? Relevancy and usefulness. I see a few categories naturally shaping our social network usage as professionals and online society members-at-large:

Professional. Gooruze is a niche professional community giving me online marketing insights. I can go to Topix or Ning but why bother? I have a question or need answers, or want to share - Gooruze meets that need. Linkedin is useful for networking, they say; I've yet to use it personally for any reason but to maintain a presence there.

Personal. How do I stay connected to a group of friends not in my professional online circle? It was MySpace a few years ago, and has morphed into Facebook.

Pownce? Their tagline is "share stuff with friends." What the hell does that mean? I don't know: Professionally I need to play a bit more there, while personally I am a bit dismissive at the moment.

Connectivity. I can connect with friends, peers and even those I don't know (yet) through the above networks. But for me, no community yet rivals Twitter. I view this as community messaging at its finest. I can follow friends and hold online conversations, all the while getting breaking news and insight from online thought leaders.

Of course RSS and email remain a part of the connectivity / information sharing equation, but even as I type these features are morphing. If I want to read a post from Solis I can usually catch it on Twitter, with no need to get my feeds through a third party. If I want to talk with George Nemeth or Clyde Miles, Twitter works for that too.

Ironically, as I type I see George and Clyde talking on Twitter. One site will dial me into their exchange, while giving me the insights, opinions and news of countless others.

Social media will shake itself out in the long-run. I have a few personal favorites, but recognize the need to keep playing in every arena to best explore an area that, by all appearances, still resembles the wild west transfered online.