…the people who oversell the value of social networking and social learning through exaggerations, deliberate or ignorant interpretation of research (which is usually poorly done anyway), and general religious zeal.

In short, many of the “gurus” in these fields, who are a) converts and true believers while b) making lucrative incomes, or hoping to make lucrative incomes by becoming the keeps of the wisdom (a tactic used in the old days of mainframes, in case you are wondering.

It’s getting pretty clear that whatever the value of social networking and social learning, that the values promised, suggested and expoused by these “gurus” primarily through social learning and networking channels is ridiculously unfounded.

I should stress that the value of these tools is currently unknown, which should make any “guru’s promises suspect and their personal integrity and knowledge levels about their own fields, highly suspect. They may end up hugely useful. They may end up not useful at all, except perhaps to a small handful of people. We don’t know. People who say they know are lying or ignorant.

Social networking and social learning need to “earn” the perception of value through demonstrated, data driven findings and NOT through survey data, or guru evangelism.

Those of us who are intellegent, intellectually honest and have learned from experience know that one of the worst things that can happen to anything — a technology, product, service — is to create a perception about the value of that item that it cannot possibly fulfil.

It is the evangelists that are the real enemies of intelligent, informed use of social technologies, because, while they may appear to be creating momentum in the marketplace, sooner or later, there will be a realization that “we” have been conned, and society as a whole has spent millions, perhaps more on technology that is, ultimately, lacking in substance and value.

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