Over on the Human Capital Vendor Space Blog, J. William Tincup says that

"You might already be aware of Ning or you may not. IMO, Ning and other social network applications, will replace blogs within the next 24 months. Don’t get me wrong - blogs are cool - especially human capital blogs. :-) But in most cases they are just modified one-way communications platforms. Nings are more than that. With a Ning, you can foster more interactivity AND a sense of community"

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I want to say thanks for including RecruitingBlogs.com on that list you have there. It's funny that way back with Recruiting.com, the blog always got mentioned in other peoples lists of recruiting blogs. The thing with RecruitingBlogs.com is that it's not a blog so I understand why it never gets mentioned. I am happy though that perhaps now, Recruiting Industry Social Networks have a category.

In the recruiting industry, I don't think that blogs will be replaced in the next 24 months because blogs do for some and could for most provide a very powerful tool to build and maintain relationships with both candidates and existing and potential clients. I do think that lots of blogs being maintained today by recruiters will not exist in 24 months unless you are generating business from your blog (for clarification I am referring to blogs that are for the most part single authored blogs. Not blogs on social networks)

The other thing about blogs is that most people cannot maintain writing day in and day out and never get any kind of feedback. If you make placements from your blog, well, you get the feedback but if all you do is write about the recruiting industry, unless you get feedback, most of the blog authors find it difficult to write for any length of time.

The thing about active social networks on Ning is that you can contribute a little and feel like you are in fact contributing. This is what makes it easy to feel part of something. A single authored blog with one post a week looks a lot different that an active social network that has 40-60 new posts a week. Of course it makes it more difficult to get to the good stuff but that is something that needs to be worked out over time.

It’s the activity that drives the community and it’s the activity that makes people want to invite (it's a signup link to RecruitingBlogs.com) others into it. There are going to be a lot more Ning recruiting related networks in the next little bit. It’s easy to do, the barrier to entry is nothing other than people to invite