One of the important things that takes a concept to implementation is necessity. Not to rehash that tired old “Necessity is the mother of invention” phrase, but it’s sort of like that with technology. Lots of people say “why would I ever need to take pictures with my cellphone? or videos? Why would I need to be able to route my phone number to someplace else? Why do I need to access my email/bank account/etc from anywhere? Why would I want to build or participate in a ‘social network’?”
It’s good to see people actually start to put this stuff together to organize, participate, and help each other in situations of crisis and emergency. Good case in point, the Gustav Social Network, hosted on Ning.