In the spirit of the imminent discovery of Higgs boson during the powering-up of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN tomorrow, I thought I would use this opportunity to speak of the physics of social networking.

I heard yesterday from a dear friend something I've heard all too often--"I'm not doing Facebook or any of those social networking things on purpose.  I don't want my life open for all to see."  Of course, I was corresponding with this friend because they had joined Plaxo, but that’s not the point.  For companies and individuals, social networking is a very simple, very strong force if they remember two things: profile and privacy.

This isn’t a geeky post; this is a post to be sure that marketers aren’t reacting to myths.  The fact is that you control what is in your profile, and any social networking tool worth a damn allows you to control your privacy as well.  And that’s the beauty of it.  While the model, like Scott McNealy, predicts that there will be no privacy (“Get over it!”), the reality is that you can control your coming out as you get more comfortable.

Companies have many privacy and profile tools at their disposal, so not taking advantage of the Strong Force of Social Networks is equivalent of setting your privacy to “no one”.  But isn’t that putting your head in the sand?