Social networking a waste of time?

According to a poll at Lifehacker.com there are many people who are pro-social networking and some are just sick and tired of social networking sites that does nothing but wasting time. Those with a objective to join the social networking sites might have some use of these sites...such as facebook, friendsters, Myspace, Deli.icio.us, Digg, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Twitter, Technorati, and a couple more...that keep popping up and it's hard to keep up to date when the next comes....

I had just joined LinkedIn which are more professional and able to get serious contacts for serious businesses but it's simply a waste of time if we don't spend enough time to update the profiles or stay active in the forums of each social networking sites or writing on "walls" on facebook...

IM (AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN) is much more direct networking and able to keep in contact in "real" time...but that's about it...many of those whom browse through stumbleupon and reach my blog(s) might be just one time reader.

Those people whom I had speak to in forums many never get to see me in person or even have any contacts at all in the future...so is social networking sites or web 2.0 sites really a waste of time?

I will think...no. It's not a waste of time, the reason I say this is that there are always some objectives in each human surfing the net...and they are always different. The variety of ideas and differences in opinions created what the future web 2.0 websites.

1. Bloggers - want to get more links to share with more people what they think and earn some advertising money from various affiliate programs such as Google Adsense....uses social networking sites to expand their influences.

2. Business Owners - want to get more business opportunity to sell or get more awareness to their websites or company or products...social networking websites simply make it more easier to get in touch with real human visitors. In fact, I recommend a full time employee to simply just chat and discuss about similar company products in all social networking forums with a simple back links to their own company websites/blogs.

3. Programmers - get more assistance in social networking sites to help boost each other in programming skills by helping others solving their programming obstacles.

4. Normal Surfer - Simply just treat these social networking sites like a piece of newspaper...once read...and thrown away in a bookmark never to pick it back again in years. Start a forum thread and never follow up, started a blog and never updates it, never have enough time to read the same blog twice...never get to do much networking as they simply have "no time". (Type 1, 2 and 3 are desperately seeking type 4's attention)

Yes, most of the people are time waster...those people never really do social networking and leaving much of the serious social networkers hanging in the middle of a old discussion thread waiting for the other party to be online...which seems to be forever. The questions that was posted weeks ago are just being read...the poll that nobody participate...

What can the next generation web 2.0 websites can change all these time wasting social networking, multiple profile updating hassle and non-interacting...in real time like a IM + MMORPG + Blog + News + Forum + Facebook....who will take up such a challenge?