Mediabistro Circus opened hot and strong today.  Over 300 people crowded into the Skylight Studio on Hudson Street for the opening day.  It appears that Jupitermedia has a solid new tradeshow.

The highlight of the day was the keynote by Chris Anderson. Chris is the editor in chief of Wired magazine and famous as well for his best seller The Long Tail. 

Chris' theme (as I saw it) was that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not what true social networking is all about.  In other words true "community" and "social networking" are at their best when one learns about a person through reading a vertical or specialized site.  In other words Facebook and MySpace are destinations and true social networking should be found at what Chris calls "Microsocial Networks" (in other words specialized sites that one goes to learn about a specific topic.  Examples can be found at Ning. 

Perhaps I liked what Chris had to say so much is because I have long been railing against people flipping out over MySpace and Facebook.  I have maintained for several years that both of these monoliths will turn out to be interesting shooting stars in Internet history.  The main problem with both of these sites is that there is no subject focus and thus advertising does not seem to work on either property.  Anderson points out that his personal Microsocial network on drones has a higher CPM rate than is found on either MySpace or Facebook.  The reason for this is that his site has focus and advertisers look for this when deciding where to spend ad dollars