Hollywood social networks are using IM Status (i.e. Busy, Away) as a communication channel (i.e. Status: Need Work). Excellent idea!

For Dave's Instant Outliner, this could be done very easily so one could see status of team members, friends, and family.

For blogrolls, a short status description element can be added to each feed. Blogroll has to be live though for this to work. How would it look? Where you see the orange XML pseudo-image on my blogroll to the right, you would see short messages from the bloggers like Need Work, Help Wanted, In Japan, Sick, or simply RIP for grave bloggers.

Note that the status could be little graphics like Sparkline or an image. Status of a dog, for example, will be a webcam snapshot.