The first beat blogger out of the gate with an active social network has been Brad Wolverton from the
Chronicle of Higher Education.

He set up a Google Group invited some of his most trusted sources and so far has 46 members that have joined. Google Groups (or Yahoo Groups) are brilliant in their simplicity. While it lacks some of the bells and whistles of a Facebook page, which can be more personal, the conversation is taken right to where people already are: Their e-mail inbox!

My public advice to Brad, which comes from some of the lessons from reporters: Find a way to keep the group engaged. A Google Group (like all social networks) is a shark – if it stops moving forward, it can die. Perhaps build a new page, an overlooked function of Google Groups, and use that to collect a few surveys you would like the social network to take.

The update from Brad:

Things are going really well. I’ve used the group several times to
help my reporting on stories, so it’s already been very successful in
my mind. I’ve also gotten a handful of people to raise discussion
topics on their own. And I just ran into probably 20 of the members at
a conference this past weekend, and they all appreciated being invited
and have enjoyed the level of conversation. I see this as a great
legacy for the beat I’m covering (meaning that I’m sure it will live on
after I’m gone), and I’m planning to suggest that more reporters around
here set up discussion groups to help their reporting.

Google
Groups is working OK. I don’t think the people in my crowd are
necessarily the kind to spend much time beyond the intellectual banter
getting to know other people online, so the technology isn’t getting in
the way of things. But I was disappointed with some of the problems I
had in setting up the group. I think I mentioned that Google flagged a
bunch of my invitations as possible spam, and I had to add people
directly. Those folks haven’t been able to access the website where the
conversation threads are archived unless they’re gmail users.