It struck me today that while I signed up as a Twitter user quite a few months ago – that I’ve never been back since and never have posted anything to my my Twitter account. So today I logged in and found that despite me never mentioning my account that I have 60 ‘followers’.
I posted something – and within minutes people were replying – how bizarre.
I think it was partly because when I first signed up I couldn’t post to it via my mobile phone service (I’m presuming I now could as I see a lot of other Aussies using it). The other reason I’ve never really used it was simply because I sometimes feel quite overwhelmed by social media sites. I find it difficult enough to keep a couple of blogs going and to play my part at b5media without up keeping lots of social media sites.
I do attempt to keep social networking sites like my facebook account up to date and log into mySpace and LinkedIn from time to time (as well as attempting to be an active StumbleUpon user) – but between them and day to day blogging I guess I find that there’s only so much a guy can do in any given day. While I’m convinced that social media is an amazing tool and something that bloggers need to explore – I guess I’m starting to feel a little social networking burnout due to the number of options to participate.
My question to you (and I know this makes two posts in a row where I’ve asked questions) is:
“How many social networking sites are you actively involved in?”
And which ones are you most active in (list them from most active to least if you like).
PS: and one last question for you hard core Twitterers (I can’t believe my spell check didn’t flag that!)…. How do you use Twitter? Is it purely for friendship, do you use it to promote your blogs, is there some other business application that you’ve found for it… etc?
Ashok touched on one of the biggest negatives of social networking sites, an idiot can have unbalancing influence if he/she teams up with a couple of other idiots.
When you meet someone in person, you get a sense of who they are and can make a decision on how much credibility to give them. Yes, you can also build up an internet reputation, but 1) it could be a complete facade and 2) if someone has an agenda and a lot of time on their hands they can skew the results.
This really hit a nerve with me when I read your comment because just last night I came across an entry on UrbanDictionary that disparages the community where I live.
Do I care what some 14-year-old twit posts on that vile web site? No. No one is going to go to that waste of server space to get home finding information.
But I do care that the twit’s post is the #1 result on Google for a particular key phrase relating to the community.
Now I’m going to have to spend time trying to bury it in the SERPs.
I’m active on:
Facebook – mostly to keep in touch with RL friends, I’ve not found it a particularly useful way to send people to my site but I don’t mind.
Flickr – works really well in driving people to my site, which makes sense since I’m an artist. I try to stay reasonably active on the groups there.
StumbleUpon – I’m still getting to grips with this one but I’ve had a few referrals from there and will probably try to increase my presence there in the future.
Ravelry and the Lime & Violet messageboards – both knitting sites so they’re mostly for personal use but a reasonable number of people from there do visit my sites.
There are only so many hours in the day and having an active presence on a social networking site is quite a lot of work. My experience with social networking sites is that they’ve also got to be fun, otherwise you just won’t bother with them.
In the last month since I set up my blog, I’ve signed on with almost all the social networking sites I could find but you’re right — there’s not enough time in the day (or even the week) to give them all enough attention.
I find that MySpace and StumbleUpon are the most useful sites. MySpace in particular because there is a huge audience there and it’s easy to find people who are interested in specific topics. I’ve been keeping a blog on MySpace for about 3 months now and have already gained a large number of subscribers, and the people there are very active with leaving comments and being supportive. Facebook doesn’t even come close with regards to audience, functionality, and flexibility.
Great topic!
In order of how I use them:
* Del.icio.us
* FaceBook
* FineTune
* Sphinn
* StumbleUpon
* Technorati
I also used to use linkedin until I found facebook. Then I dropped linkedin cold.
i have a myspace account, and i used to care, but then i watched my hits and no one came, so what’s the point…plus its just annoying to use anymore
i occasionally visit facebook, but i just can’t get into it
I use del.icio.us every day, but not much of the social features, just to keep track of stuff i want to look at
I do not use actively any social network services because I do not know how to integrate them into what I’m doing: consulting and building my site.
MySpace- Demographic is too young.. too many “amateur web designers”, horrible that music is forced on you
Facebook- Coming on strong.. many people using it.. simple, easy to the point. Takes a little while to “get” what kind of service they’re offering..
1. Twitter. I’m really into twitter these days because there is something nicely visceral about how real time the information is. It’s also a great way to make an initial social contact or maintain contact with someone in your field that you’re just getting to know.
2. Facebook. I use it to keep track of friends and colleagues who I want to become friends with. I’m also trying to use it for fundraising and community building for my non-profit.
3. Linked in. Useful, but boring.
4. Myspace. Feels spammy. I hate the interface.
5. Seesmic. Going to try it out. Want to get into videoblogging for work, but am a bit daunted. Seems like it could be a nice entry.
6. Pownce. Trying it out. It’s nice in that you reply to people’s micro-posts in a threaded fashion which twitter doesn’t support.
I have had to cut back on the social sites I use but I am down to
* Twitter – http://twitter.com/budcalabrese
* StumbleUpon – http://budcalabrese.stumbleupon.com/
* Technorati –
* Mybloglog – http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/budcalabrese
* Myspace – I try not to use it much anymore
I don’t think they not as good as they were.Anyways, here is my list:
BlogCatalog
Stumble Upon
del.icio.us
Facebook
MySpace
And of course, digg