Social recruitment and referral networks do they really work and can anyone do anything really new?

I met with 2 guys yesterday, they've decideed to enter the world of online recruitment with a new referral and networking model, they ran through what it offers and there were some neat little tweaks and variations on a theme that's already becoming established but the whole thing left me thinking.. are we on the verge of another brief dotcom boom and bust for the social media and referral industry?

The world and his dog wants to do something with social networking and referrals (for christ's sake I even toyed with it!). There is not a day goes by without soemone telling me they are launching a shiny new facebook, myspace, secondlife, bebo, whatever application or explaining a clever new way for referrals to empower candidates...

There are some great sites out there but all these social applications? I'm yet to see any stats from anyone telling me how much their app is used, how much traffic it generated and whether they recovered the costs of building it. With more and more people entering the market how long before the consumer says "enough is enough, I came here to network and meet people not find a job". To me it's a little like the equivalent of going to the pub and having a recruiment consultant constantly interfere with your conversation by suggesting job hunting tips or trying to get you to register (which has on more than one occasion happened to me).

Referrals? How well is the referral market going, again it's not something NORAS is going to start showing stats for equally Hitwise and Comscore can only show us traffic, how well are these sites doing and how satisfied are the clients that use them?

This all sounds horribly negative but I think people in the industry have to be aware that there are market leaders out there for a reason; careful planning, good market knowledge, an understanding of their audience, good looking, well optimised sites run by people who have been in the industry for a while and who understand it's pitfalls and above all; investment. Try and do it on a shoe string and it'll die quicker than Posh Spice's self esteem.

Have a look at zubka Jobtonic and Jobster to get an idea of what the market leaders are up to, if you think you can do soemthing as well and make it work then good luck, give me a call, I'd love to have a look around it and offer any (hopefully) constructive criticism if you'd like it.