Where do you live? IF you are in a fairly major city, head out to open mic nights and meet people. Network. Use Facebook type social networking sites and see who is playing where. For example, here where I live there are 7 open mic opportunities that I knew nothing about until I met a few people who normally attend either to watch or perform. I have been a spectator, but will be signing up to play a 3 song slot maybe next week. One of them is so popular there is a waiting list to get a 15 minute slot.

Of course if you live in a city of 500 people with no live music scene it will be different, but there are not many cities that have NO music scene at all, and at worst case you may be an hour from an active music community.

The only thing about online collaboration is just what JCS said. It may be weeks before they get around to your stuff. In a home studio, it's NOW.