Yes, sorry, I was talking about two things at once (as was the author).
There are social networks that are valuable but evaporate (see, e.g., Digg). There are "inorganic" social networks that appear valuable because they have lots of passer-bys.
Potemkim village is a good word for the latter. I'd put Google+ in that category, Robert Scoble's love affair with it notwithstanding.
But no, I don't think you can be a Potemkin Village unless you are (a) fake and (b) designed to fool a temporary visitor. A Potemkin Village is a fraud. Even the people who hate Google+ don't claim that it doesn't actually exist. (Or do they?!)
A Potemkin Village social network might be something like one with a bunch of sock puppet accounts that appeared to be active, but which in fact was set up to deceive, say, an investor into thinking there was a real community there. A tech term close to "Potemkin Village" might be "vaporware".
The story behind Potemkin Villages is so colorful and profound (so good, as they say, that it had to be invented) that the term can only apply to deceptions of that variety.
Veering off a bit, there's an interpretation of the story I've always liked, according to which Potemkin has facades of prosperous villages erected for Catherine as she passes by, and Catherine, shrewd as ever, expresses imperial approval even as she can see perfectly well that they are fakes. In other words, the whole thing was a charade (analogous to the old Soviet joke, "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us") conducted for internal political purposes, and none of the players cared about the actual status of the villages.
My thinking about the metaphor ended here: "Hey everyone, we set up this cool village for you all to come live in!" Like those creepy ghost cities in China. Google has the hooks to get everyone to take a tour, hoping that X% decide to stay.
I hereby cede to you the title of Grand Master of Metaphor.
There are social networks that are valuable but evaporate (see, e.g., Digg). There are "inorganic" social networks that appear valuable because they have lots of passer-bys.
Potemkim village is a good word for the latter. I'd put Google+ in that category, Robert Scoble's love affair with it notwithstanding.