One of the challenges with "social networking" sites is that most are more correctly "social linking" sites. Is the grocery store a "social networking" facility? There sure are lots of people there at any given moment and you could easily introduce yourself to any one of them? And yet, you wouldn't come home and say, "Wow, I talked to a checkout dude who is has superficial interactions with 300,000 customers!"
While there is a lot of both hype and potential for services like Wallop, Tribe, SecondLife, etc., they are all like bad parties where everyone is gathered in small circles with their backs to anyone new. One of the benefits of a good host/hostess (other than attracting an interesting crowd) is his/her ability to introduce individuals to other individuals who are likely to share some kind of interest. To my knowledge, no social networking site is particularly good at making introductions and most do not even try.
The best opportunities for inserting yourself into one of these circles on the net is the good old fashioned discussion group or a multi-player game (like World of Warcraft). Games are particularly unique in that they present specific objectives that encourage or require genuine interest in collaboration.
Without some mechanism for introducing people to each other, "social networking" services like Wallop and SecondLife often have a creepy vibe like that of someone coming up to you at Safeway and saying, "Hi, would you like to be friends?"
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