Pssst, Want To Make Money Monetizing Social Networking Instead Of Time-Wasting Social NOT Working?

FaceBook, MySpace, linkedin, and so many other social networking sites offer great ways to connect with people - and lose touch with reality (and time spent on a computer). That is even before location-aware GPS and RFID devices, married to addictive platforms like FaceBook, Twitter and MySpaceTime.net (more on that later) make social networking mean even more being social and not working even during working hours.

It is so ironic that just about 16 years I wrote a piece contradicting people's then assertion that computers and the Internet were going to make us all anti-social.

Having started probably one of the first online matrimonial sites, I dared to disagree.

I felt that though we may spend more time on our computers, the Internet would actually help us find that one in a million connection from places around the world we could never have gone or known or met that person.

Little did I know how social networking would grow.

Of course, as is my forte, I have a knack for starting new things. But, in the past I also had a "rebel without a cause" habit of not sticking around in such businesses long enough to become a millionaire off them. Usually, I sat back and a few years later watched someone else do the same thing, with funding instead of personal funds, and grow rich/er. I saw the same thing as online dating grow into a huge business with the likes of match.com and others.

When I started/founded Internet email for my native country of Pakistan, I also became co-owner and co-founder of the .PK top level domain. Besides the kick of being called "father of the Internet" (at least in Pakistan), I even gave people free email addresses to promote email. But, never could I have imagined that sticking around giving something for free I could later have sold it to a giant corporation as hotmail did a few years later. Oh, well, live and learn.

When I started writing an online journal and political opinions (Occasionally Obnoxious, Obviously Outspoken Opinions) at http://imran.com in 1995-96, little did I know that I could have built some sort of "blogging" empire on that.

In 1995 I became a heavy GPS user in boating and later in aviation. In 1998-2000 I became CEO of EverTrac, among the first out the gate pitching RFID and GPS based solutions. Alas, as usual, like Panasonic's slogan, I was just slightly ahead of my time.

But, this current new momentum of GPS based devices we are seeing will prove I was on the right.... umm.. EverTrac?

Hopefully, this time, with my current projects, covering GPS, social networking and mobile-monetization - I'll actually make some real money if I can sell something to a Google or Yahoo or, some even smarter business!

If that does not happen, I guess the pattern (or call it the Corporate Culture of an Entrepreneur) here is that I love to start new things, just before their time, that others make billions off later.

So, feel free to call me about what I an doing now. Surely I can help you become a Web 2.0 multi-millionaire doing whatever I am too lazy to make money from!