In my 90 day experiment, 'Zero to Hero', I'm taking the journey from a low online profile (or reputation) to a high one. Along the way I'm looking at what can be achieved with consistent, strategic networking online.

Remember the old video tape debate - Beta or VHS? Seems so long ago, but reputations were made and lost on that battle. Empires fell and fortunes were lost. People's video collections became obselete almost overnight. They were forced to 'pick a lane' and many chose the wrong one.

Fast forward (ha ha!) to the Blue Ray vs HD-DVD battle, which has all but been decided. Basically, Sony's Blue Ray disks have been fighting Toshiba's High Definition DVD. At times it was hard to pick a winner, but those who invested personally (by buying them) and commercially (by investing in them) with Toshiba will lose.

Now it's a war of the online social networks. Some have crashed and burned (Friends Reunited in the UK is a great example of an early social network that is now lost in oblivion; MySpace is falling out of fashion but for the diehard youth) while some are leading the line (Twitter, Facebook). The stats are interesting.

The main question is this. Which ones will endure? After all, you don't want to sink your time, your effort and your life into building a network, a following and a 'second life' for it to fold in a couple of years, do you?

A few people whose opinion I respect in the social media space have told me that in a short time, networks like LinkedIn may dwindle. Reason? They're too closed, selective and controlling.

By contrast, Ecademy is an organically growing social network with a real community feel and a very open, collaborative, almost family ethos. It's open, random and supportive.

Right now, you may not need to pick a lane. But with many online networks struggling to turn a profit (LinkedIn and Facebook still do not make a profit!), the trick is to monetize the social capital inherent in the networks.

Twitter is free and has a host of 'open source' applications which make it open and fun to use. There is an increasing 'business' approach to Twitter. Other networks are following suit. The world is becoming open, random and supportive, rather than just connecting.

I'm finding that unless I'm in the office all day, keeping connected meaningfully to more than three networks is exhaustive. I spent 4 hours alone on Twitter today, studying apps, reading ebooks and blogs, figuring out tools and making 'tweets'.

I'm dropping facebook and investing in LinkedIn, Ecademy and Twitter. Let's see if I've picked the right lanes...