I love Social Networks. I love how they help you stay in touch and talk to groups of friends and acquaintances. Businesses should definitely harness the power of Social Networks for their purposes – be it as research & development forums, word-of-mouth amplifiers or for competitor’s analyses. But they should usually stay away from building their own Social Networks.

ReadWriteWeb had a good post about the waste of time and money on corporate Social Networks. Seriously, who really wants to hang out with fellow, let’s say, Deutsche Bank customers in a Deutsche Bank network? I know I don’t! Most customers will choose their preferred Social Network to exchange thoughts about products – like the HSBC group of outraged students on Facebook (I wrote about it last year).

They will also talk about what they like… don’t worry, corporates! But as ReadWriteWeb put it: “How would you feel if you spent more than $1 million throwing a party and less than 100 or even 1,000 people showed up? ” So corporates: harness existing big networks, and stay away from custom building them. It just doesn’t pay off.