Ksenia Oustiougova of Lilipip checks messages on her phone.

Ksenia Oustiougova makes many of her most important connections online -- landing a deal with Zappos.com, for example, after sending a direct message to the online retailer’s top executive.

So the 33-year-old Seattle entrepreneur wasn’t easily swayed when a representative of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce approached her recently to suggest that her web animation company, Lilipip, join the regional business group. She listened to his pitch, then she politely wiggled out of the conversation.

“I don’t know why I would join,” she said later. “There’s no benefit to me.”

Right or wrong, Oustiougova represents the next wave of hyper-connected corporate leaders and exemplifies a growing challenge for the traditional groups long at the center of business networking. Even as they retrofit their operations for the new world of Internet communications, these organizations risk having some of their core functions supplanted by free online tools.

It’s not unlike the challenge faced by newspapers whose customers found more-efficient and less-costly ways of connecting with each other online, reducing the demand for printed classified ads.

“Social media give us a much greater diversity of ways to self-organize,” said Hanson Hosein, director of the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program. “There may still be value in these old-line organizations, but people now realize that they have a choice.”

Even the most tech-savvy organizations can face challenges in courting the Internet generation. In fact, the Greater Seattle Chamber is much further along than many of its counterparts in adapting to social media. It boasts its own YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page and Flickr photostream. That’s in addition to its more than 1,100 followers on Twitter – a very respectable number, albeit fewer than half as many as Oustiougova has.

Seattle Chamber officials use social media to communicate with their members, draw people to their events, and highlight what’s happening in the regional business community. They also bring in social media experts to speak at their events and help educate chamber members on best practices.

Even Oustiougova attended a recent event where the Greater Seattle Chamber brought in “Wired” editor-in-chief and “Long Tail” author Chris Anderson to discuss the online trends documented in his latest book, “Free.” She got the membership pitch from a chamber representative after that event.

“If anything else, I think we attract people with the programs that we offer on how to navigate social media,” said Emmy Jordan, the Greater Seattle Chamber’s senior vice president of membership and business development. Jordan also cited programs such as the Seattle Chamber’s young professionals organization, and explained that she doesn’t see social media replacing the Chamber’s value.

“I see it as a complement to the rest of the things we offer,” she said.

Frank Kenny, president of the North Mason Chamber of Commerce in Belfair, Wash., knows firsthand the power of online social networking, crediting it for a 75 percent increase in membership.

“If you embrace it, it’s a huge boon to your chamber, and I think I’ve proven that,” Kenny said. “But if you don’t — if you wait too long — then it’s a terrible risk.”

Kenny uses Twitter and Facebook, but he points in particular to his use of the social networking platform Ning to run the site mynorthmasonchamber.com. The interactive site, with videos, personalized home pages, events listings, an online activity feed and other features, gets “tons more” traffic than the traditional northmasonchamber.com home page, he said.

That extra level of online engagement has helped the North Mason Chamber grow from 210 members in April 2008 to 370 members now, with a 95 percent retention rate, Kenny said.

Not everyone is so on board with social networking. Some traditional business and service organizations across the nation are just starting to dabble in social networking. Still others are content with relatively old-school tools such as email and traditional websites.

“It’s a wide, wide spectrum,” said Jared Engeset, associate manager at the Institute for Organization Management, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce affiliate that also uses a Ning-based site to supplement the in-person professional development programs it offers for association and chamber professionals.

In the Seattle region, the Downtown Seattle Association is actively using Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to promote its “Summer in the City” campaign. And the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce has established its own Twitter account – with only three updates so far, but plans for more.

That contrasts sharply with groups such as the Rotary Club of Seattle, which has a website but still uses weekly email blasts to spread information. Valerie Elliott, the Seattle Rotary executive director, made it clear the group isn’t about to jump aboard the Twitter bandwagon.

“We are not a social network,” she explained. “We are a service club.”

One big advantage for established business and service groups is their existing connections to government officials and other community leaders as they lobby and advocate on behalf of their members.

But traditional business organizations are increasingly going up against groups native to the Internet as they compete for the time, attention and participation of young business leaders.

Examples include the Social Media Club Seattle, which can draw hundreds of people to its events by tapping into the network effects of Twitter and similar tools. Organizers send short messages to their followers, who retweet them to their followers, and so on, expanding exponentially.

People at Social Media Club events often put their Twitter handles, not their names, on their badges. When RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser spoke at the group’s most recent event, he asked how many people had posted at least 250 updates on Twitter since they started on the service. Someone in the audience joked that the real question should be how many people had posted at least 250 updates that day.

“We’re different than most organizations because most of our people already know each other via online channels, and really the face-to-face is just making a deeper connection,” said Kevin Urie, president of Social Media Club Seattle and digital evangelist at Mountlake Terrace-based Destination Marketing.

At the same time, Urie said he doesn’t believe that any one group can fit the needs of everyone, and he believes that there will be an ongoing role for traditional organizations such Chambers of Commerce – particularly those that incorporate social media approaches into their operations.

Regardless of the organization, in-person local gatherings will remain important despite the rise of social media tools, said Hosein, the UW digital media expert. As much as he has embraced Twitter and other forms of social networking, for example, Hosein says he often makes the strongest connections with “the people who actually come and see me because it means that much to them.”

But even after attending author Anderson’s recent presentation at the Greater Seattle Chamber event, Lilipip founder Oustiougova said she continues to see more power and authenticity in online connections.

She cited, as an example, the way she was able to connect with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to work on web animation for the company.

“How long do you think it’s going to take me to get to somebody like this if I go to a Seattle Chamber event? Years, if at all,” she said. “So I’m bypassing that and connecting directly with him.”