Twitter, Facebook Just 'Virtual Ballrooms'

ools don't matter, and the best ones get out of the way, allowing people to connect more easily and effectively. That was my big takeaway from last Friday's second-annual Blog Potomac.

Obsessing about "what's next" in online services and technology saps too much valuable attention away from what's really important: connecting with people. We need to stop obsessing on what comes after Twitter and focus instead on how best to connect to, communicate with and relate to our clients, colleagues and consumers.

Here's why: The internet, with all of those fun time-sync tools, is supposed to make connecting with people more efficient. Social networks, blogs, microblogs and forums destroy the previously prohibitive barriers to efficient communications: moving people physically around the planet and making sure they're in the same place at the same time. But the downside of all of this efficiency is that too many of us lose track of the forest for the trees.

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