For the longest time I thought Twitter was dead stupid. My first impression was "Why the hell do I care that Steve Smith (fictional name) just rented a video game at blockbuster?". I think before Twitter really exploded, the content on there was typically dumb because people didn't really know what to say. Twitter's power, IMHO, can be summed up in two main points:

• Connectivity. It works on your cell phone, IM and the web. Heck, there is even a nifty Adobe AIR application for it (tweetr).

A very short time ago, Facebook morphed from being a social network to being a “social networking platform”. What this means is they have opened up their API for third parties to produce plugin applications that users may add to their profiles. This move has been blindingly successful in that only a few weeks from launch there are 1766 applications written for the platform.

But I wonder why.

A couple of days ago I posed a question to my linked in network:

What do you consider the most important feature of a social networking application?

I'm just fishing here, trying to understand what a diverse group would come back with. There are so many social networking sites out there, linked in included, that the most important features of these applications are starting to be a tad obscured. If possible, please answer based on your own use of social network technologies...don't think too hard.