Another story.

Some months back, at a management seminar, I listened to Dr.C.K.Prahalad speak about his ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ model. One of the case studies he used was a hospital where I had worked, the Narayana Hrudayalaya at Bangalore.

After the lecture, as I waited to meet C.K., I noticed the CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical firms standing beside me. I walked up to introduce myself, and was rudely snubbed by the CEO of Dr.Reddy’s Labs, who pointed towards the speaker and said: “I’m waiting to meet him.”

So I turned away, walked up to Dr.Prahalad, and when my turn came, spoke with him for a few minutes. He politely listened to my comment, and briefly responded.

I walked away, thinking. It is far easier to make contact with even world-famous people when they are (or have lived) outside India - but inordinately difficult to even greet a ‘big name’ inside my country!

That’s for ‘cultural background’.

Chris Brogan recently blogged about the wide ranging, even high level connections he has made through social networks.

My experience is very similar. I have interacted with bestselling authors like Seth Godin, tech mavens like Garage.com CEO Guy Kawasaki, and America’s top business consultants like Jay Abraham through online media.

And some of these connections translate into real world contacts too. A couple of years back, I was privileged to be a dinner guest at the British House of Commons, as an invitee of an M.P. who is a good friend of mine - and we first met over the Web.

There’s even more than this to social networking online.

The confidence gained by making such connections has let me boldly step up to a Fortune 500 CEO in my country, get snubbed… and then without being flustered, walk up to one of the management geniuses of our time (a man who is at third spot on Suntop Media’s 2005 “Thinkers 50″ list, behind Harvard strategy specialist, Michael Porter, and Microsoft founder, Bill Gates) and hold a meaningful conversation.

In short, it has made me bolder, more confident and a better person.

Which alone would be a response to Chris Brogan’s opening sentence, “Spending a lot of time in front of a computer is a waste of time.”

But then, I read 2 other things in the last 24 hours that made me think.

One was Seth Godin’s mention of his forthcoming new book, “The Meatball Sundae”. It’s premise is that just as you can’t put whipped cream and a cherry on a meatball and create a sundae… you can’t layer social networking and New Marketing upon a business or product and hope it will become an instant winner.

Social networking is suitable for certain businesses - not all.

The other was on Justin Kownacki’s blog, and was titled “Are You a Person or a Brand?”. And Justin makes some very nice points about how your behavior online, your choices of medium and marketing message, are defined by how you perceive yourself and wish to be known (as an ‘individual’ or a strong ‘brand’).

Social networking is better suited for networking - not quite for branding.

Except, when you step back and take a broader perspective, many things collapse down to a singularity.

Personalities (and individuals attached to them) do (or can) become brands. They can still participate in diverse social networks without diluting their ‘brand’ - simply because they ARE the brand.

The tools they use stop being separate and unique and distinct entities. Not ‘Facebook’ or ‘MySpace’ or ‘Twitter’. Instead, they become what they are - tools in a bag or kit, from which the person pulls out and uses the right one for the right task.

And when that’s the kind of business you are building or are in, social networking no longer becomes the ‘Meatball Sundae’ - it’s now the REAL deal… vanilla and chocolate topped with whipped cream and a cherry… or spaghetti, sauce and meatballs - with ketchup!

There’s another dimension to why some people spend (waste?) time exploring (for now) social networking, and other cutting-edge, untested media and methods. They like being ‘different’. And that’s their brand. At least, it is mine.

See http://www.b–Different.com (yes, TWO hyphens after the ‘b’)

I daresay there are no other pediatric cardiac surgeons in the world who also run an online business, blog regularly and network online via Twitter, MySpace, Squidoo and blogs.

When I got my first Internet connection way back in 1995, there were 800 others in my city who had one. Today, there are a little over 1 MILLION people with Web access in the same city. Can you say ‘early adopter’?

And like Chris Brogan, who now is “over here figuring out ways you can make it work if you want to put in the effort”, I too have worked it out for myself. Turned what at the time was a ‘wasted’, ‘useless’, ‘unprofitable’ activity into an income stream that has secured my financial future and lets me reach out to fulfill a dream, brought me in touch with leaders and visionaries, technocrats and social reformers, millionaires and less wealthy but no less interesting folks around the world.

In the process, I built my PERSONAL brand on the platform of ‘being DIFFERENT‘.

It works for me.

Will it work for you? I don’t know. Neither do you. The question is:

Do you want to find out?

Do you dare to?