In the physical world, having a smart set of friends allows one to explore new ideas, interesting ideas in a short amounts of time. The social network is beneficial in many ways: 1. A large number of inputs, of varying quality, about the subject, which allows one to acquire a “feel” for the field. 2. A testing ground for ideas. That is, one can hope to weed out dead end ideas by virtue of exposing it to people with varying amounts expertise and experience. For the purpose of this discussion, I’ll consider only the first part.

How can this be achieved using social networks? With the advent of twitter, friendfeed, blogs etc.,
one can have a n