Got back from this panel discussion tonight with Carol. Well worth the $80 to attend, although we could have easily just shown up without registering, stick a nametag on, and mingle as if we were Santa Clara students

Got to meet Fred Stutzman for the first time. I also met and exchanged cards with every single panelist, who all seemed very interested in the church social networking space. The crazy thing was that Steve Loughlin of Affinity Circles knew about MyChurch.org! He complemented us on our clean look and said some other nice things.

I mustered the courage to ask a question during Q&A and directed it at Jim Scheinman. "Reid Hoffman of LinkedIN talks about distribution being the secret sauce to any successful consumer website. You said today that Bebo went from 0 to 12 million uniques within a matter of months, can you share some of the distribution channels that Bebo was able to take advantage of?"

Jim answered with the savvy of someone who worked at both Friendster and Bebo... saying he couldn't reveal any secrets but implied that the founders leveraged off their learnings and work from other consumer sites. I translated that as SPAM

I'll keep the practical learnings and takeways to myself and my team.  But I will say this - everyone on that panel was convicted that social networking is the future of internet communication with lots of room for growth and innovation.  It is in no way a fad that will die as some claim. Although they have an agenda in believing this, I wouldn't bet against them...

Danah Boyd has predicted that social networking for the sake of hanging out will die within a couple years. But everyone thinking about this space seems to agree social networking for the sake of being useful, relevant, and trustworthy has lots of room for growth and improvement in many niches and verticals.

Best thing I heard - Keith Rabois believes LinkedIN will have a higher liquidity event than Facebook.

2nd best thing I heard - Keith Rabois was an early investor in YouTube and remembers when the 3 founders pitched their site to him, which only had 100 videos at the time... and 2/3 of them were videos of one of the founders dancing.