Social networking nowadays is considered just a synonym for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
And the Wikipedia link shown above is a classical example: you search for social networking, and you get social network service.
But it started before. And it is not limited to that.
The most interesting part is the integration of the new technologies in the normal everyday activities.
Who knows me from real life, knows that I have been involved first in the entertainment (theatre, radio, tv) as a child via my father (actor), and then in political campaigning (again, first via my father, then in my late teens for a European Federalist Mouvement and also for an Italian political party).
I started using and testing BBSes (the precursor of public internet: see this documentary) in the 1990s, and then the Internet.
The purpose? Through entertainment and political campaigning as a kid, I started getting interested in social engineering and cultural anthropology (that eventually I perfected one summer at the University in Sweden).
And any closed group is really a tribe.
As my management consulting customers know (from methodologies to other issues, up to startups), I always focus on integrating technologies inside processes if and where needed: first the culture, then the adds-on.
Therefore, sometimes I had a tough time suggesting customers (e.g. using Lotus Notes) to use only the features requested: and not to feel guilty if they weren’t using what they did not need.
Anyway- I guess that nobody using Microsoft Office is using 100% of its features 
After experimenting for few years with different online social networks, and studying different tribes, I planned to write and publish online a book on social networking as a social experience: embedding new technologies in real life.
I released the first printing rights of part of the introductory material (about 50 pages) to a customer, for their own marketing activities, adapted for their marketing focus.
But meanwhile in 2008 I completed the research on the various issues.
While the news change on a daily basis, the basic ways to interact are more or less static- you need a radical new technology to change how communities and their members interact.
Nowadays, Internet communities are representative of the general population- not just geeks.
But the difference vs. the usual social networks (like: the people you meet at the café or pub every once in a while, what the English call “pub friends”) is, of course, that most of the physical interaction is removed.
There are of course differences in behaviour between people used to personal communication technology (mobile, messaging, Internet, e-mail, etc) from their childhood and people who started using at a later stage (see Marc Prensky articles).
But the main difference is in the way interaction between members happen.
If you go beyond Facebook and the other online communication sites whose target is the general population, you will see communities built around any kind of weird idea or habit- from conspiracy theories, to people writing online what probably they would never say to themselves aloud.
During the Summer of 2009 I will start to release part of my research (few hundred pages, and few thousand pages of supporting references, links, articles, etc), with a focus on the integration across all the communication spectrum: not only social networks online, but also how different communication channels are being integrated into everyday life, changing normal processes (if you want- “cross-media convergence” in a really extended way).
You can say: well, there is already a ton of books on the subject.
And you are right. But those are books on the subject.
My approach is more pragmatic- a descriptive “how to do it if you like” attitude, as you can see in BusinessFitnessMagazine.Com or PartnershipIncubator.Com.
Or, on a less serious note, on UnitedHamsterFront.Com, my way of joking about potential side-effects of technologies (back online in Spring 2009).
I am first and foremost a social engineering practitioner: as any management consultant should be, as you are not simply delivering advice, you are influencing or supporting change.
Therefore, beside giving you also my shortlist of “suggested readings” (in any media format- sometimes just MP3, sometimes articles, and few decent books), you will find a theoretical description, along with practical advice on how to implement, and the questions that you should ask yourself before you do something that could have unintended consequences for you or your organization.
For various reasons, the discussion will covered also risks and dangers, but with links only to mainstream communities (e.g. the services listed on the introduction to the Wikipedia article on social network service).
The reason is simple: while politically or sexually deviant groups before Internet were far apart, they are now interconnected to an alarming extent.
Therefore, there is no reason to bring further traffic to those sites: and no, I do not have those links and associated material- it was sickening enough to study it (I wonder how can keep their sanity those focusing on all the cranks around): a “burn after reading”, if you want.
It is the same reason why in UK at the beginning of the 2000s, I asked for advice from a former CID and then banker, as I designed a new service to allow secure transactions between unknown parties.
The title? DoubleBlinding (the domain is still there- the concept is the one used in medical experiments, e.g. to remove the potential of the staff influencing the participants, and therefore the name could be interesting).
Of course, it was before 2001… but after discussing for a couple of hours, eventually I saw that there was no way to deliver the service without creating a security nightmare.
So, I dumped part of the software that I had already created, and used part of it only to test secure data storing on shared servers in MySQL, as the engine behind a small community I created and kept alive for some time, ComshareNoMore.Com, as a connecting tool for former colleagues scattered around the world (most recently: I had re-activated it using Drupal- but I closed it when I saw that finally somebody decided to create and manage a group on Linkedin).
The material will be always with a pragmatic attitude in mind: the material on how to use the “cross-media convergence” will contain few practical cases that I supported from the beginning, so that you will be able to read a short story on the pitfalls to avoid, and not only the successes.
Some quick advice: if you start buying books about social networking, remember that imitating something that has been done by somebody else few years ago is the best way to generate losses.
You should first define what you are, and then pick the technologies to support it (maybe generating some changes to your original ideas)- not the other way around.
Finally: if you decide to create your own social network, remember that you need a critical mass to keep it lively and attractive- and maybe integrating Facebook connect and/or OpenID will bring you more people than stubbornly trying to have them to register with you.
I am really active on few communities, but I had to register probably in a couple of hundreds of sites just to view some basic material (please: it seems that every Joomla plugin designer assumes that you need to be a member of their community :@).
Therefore, I myself made the choice on this blog to add Facebook Connect: if you want to post a comment, you do not need an id- you just need to be on Facebook.
Two benefits: you do not need to manage users’ registrations, and Facebook has all the staff needed to remove fake or abusive users 
Tags: as, bbs, comshare, convergence, cross-media, drupal, embedding, experience, facebook, in, joomla, life, lotus notes, marketing, myspace, mysql, networking, new, openid, real, security, social, technologies