Whitmore, a former columnist for Forbes.com, said that blanket definitions were not useful in business. In business, segments were needed. He broke social networking into three segments: corporations, media, people.
For corporations, Whitmore, who spent 14 years at Ziff-Davis Publishing, did not see social networking as working. In media, he saw social networking as giving the printing presses to the community. Professional journalists were able to use social networking to get good content. It empowered readers to create editorial products. The products were more relevant than the ones created by editors. For instance, elections created opportunities for communities to share with peers.
Whitmore explained that passion was required to make social networking efficient. In technology such as open source, there is passion. If there was no passion to begin with, the tools of social networking would not accelerate the communications.
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