Ken Yamosh at the Read/Write Web has written a brief review of four smart social networks: Facebook, imbee, Vox, and Multiply. The main points are as follows:

Facebook is a social networking space used much by college students that allows them to determine who can see their profile and the amount of contact information according to a determined classification.

Multiply gives one fine-tuned control over who can view their space.

Vox seems to be good for integrating a variety of web services like flickr, youtube, and others.

Because children are more and more entering the digital world, imbee is one parents should be interested in.

imbee is the "first secure social networking and blogging destination for kids." Users can't just connect with each other by browsing profiles. They need to know the e-mail addresses and/or imbee user names of other imbee members.

Kids cannot join the site without a credit card being on file (and not necessarily charged), meaning that someone - probably a parent - is going to have to be involved from the start. Parents can also control the way their kids interact on the site. New messages, connections, and other profile changes get put into a queue for parents to approve - depending on the approval rules put in place.

All of these services are providing more control over your privacy and how much you reveal of yourself to the outside world.

I like all of these tools, especially imbee. But I wonder how much use they are to professionals. Usually, I can easily contact those I collaborate with by email, and for subject-specific interests, there are email listservs, along with wikis and blogs. They seem to work well for "social" endeavors but I'm not sure how well they work for "professional" purposes.