Don't be a Hero

Throughout its brief history, social networking has been a rise and fall kind of a thing. Friends Reunited, Friendster, Bebo, MySpace - what goes up, must come down. Similarly, a lot of onlookers would have you believe that Facebook's perch at the top is equally precarious; Mark Zuckerberg may have 500 million friends now, but how long before someone comes along and wipes that awkward smile off his billion-dollar chops?

Well, naysayers - it appears your wait is over! News has reached me of the launch of BackUpHeroes, the self-styled "first social network dedicated to improving backup and recovery strategies". And, by God, I'm sure we'll all agree that's an innovation that's long, long overdue.

"Why do we need such a site?," asks the marketing bumph. Personally, I don't need convincing, but in case there's any doubt, the reasoning runs thus: "more and more backup professionals need a social networking site to call their own".

Good point. In fact, my own pretend research shows that, of the 23,284 backup professionals I didn't talk to, some 99.7 per cent earmarked a social networking site to call their own as the biggest thing missing from their life. Just ahead of a girlfriend, social skills, better hair, better clothes and regular exercise.