From Wikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.

Social networks, then, cover a range of associations between members in some relationship to one another. Communities, then, are social networks. And like communities, social networks come in many forms. The different forms have different value propositions for the members.

Taking this a little farther, MySpace is often considered a social network. Okay, fine. But MySpace equals social networking to the same extent that that a cruise ship equals transportation. Yes it's true that a cruise ship is transportation for people with some very specific transportation needs. In the same sense MySpace is a social network for people with some very specific needs.

And the needs of that very specific audience happen to revolve around private spaces and identity production.

Now, below is a screenshot of another social network. This social network has no single "site" at its social center, though there may indeed be several management tools to help create and maintain it . People in this type of association typically have different needs than those in play on MySpace. (They better, because this social network isn't likely to meet their needs otherwise.)

This social network (one of mine, actually, and currently managed in an online reader called Feedraider that has some great features) is optimized for professionals seeking to maintain their knowledge and discover new information as it becomes available globally and in near real time in the area of web2.0 community technologies, tools, and techniques. Yes, it's nothing but a collection of RSS feeds. But a collection of RSS feeds -- the right collection of RSS feeds -- can change your life.

It's probably obvious, but the subject of the Feedraider social network portrayed above is only one of a nearly limitless number of possible subject areas. Others might include things like movies or books, sports fitness, hiking, Windows Vista deployment, ASP.Net development, Microsoft Small Business Server, or -- you get the point.

If you're reading this, you probably already have one or more of these types of social networks. Good for you. In fact, very good for you. You've already tapped into the latest generation "community" solution that is either already, or soon will, make you far more productive (for so many reasons) than any single resource in the past -- at least any that I've known about. It's a fabric that can and will underlie every other online community type.

Why this should be so, will be the subject of a later post. In that post I'll detail why this type of social network makes every participant more efficient and it can, for instance, answer most of your questions before you even know to ask them. I know, if you haven't experienced this first hand it sounds crazy. It's not. It's common sense. It's an everyday experience. It's unavoidable if you just plug in. In fact in its essentials, it's nothing new. It's little more than an online version of old old game -- it's another one of those disruptive things that have emerged recently on the web.

And it's one type of community my team is set to support, to accelerate, to simplify, and to introduce to a broader audience, when we release a new set of beta services in April.

Weak-tie networks rock.