Over at the FastCompany blogs, Dave Teten and Scott Allen summarize a few key thoughts from their book “The Virtual Handshake”, including 10 Implications of Social Software, breaking it up into personal and business thoughts.

Its an interesting read for anyone NOT immersed in social networking, web20 news, and those not familiar with “The YouTube”.  For the rest of us, its all a bit old hat with many of the observations self-evident.

In fact, as I was reading it, I was struck by how the very nature of social software makes it very easy to get at least a cursory grasp of it .  I mean, every single service is almost free, so no cost barrier; every one of them makes an attempt to be user friendly; and the popular ones at least probably has a significant cohort of friends or family already using it, making the “social” part easier to navigate.

For any individual interested in how these technologies are impacting the way we work and interact, they’d best dispense with the books and just dive right in.  

The water’s nice and warm — just watch out for the occasional shark.  And the fact that, in some parts anyway, there’s a reason why its a little warmer than others ;)

FREE SWAG ALERT: “The Virtual Handshake” is available as a free download — be wary, though, its asking for quite a bit of information.  In case anyone does ask, I DO live in Swahili — the broadband is a bit sketchy, but we get by.