Here’s a question for the weekend that was submitted to me from Twitter friend philbaumann who asks:
if you were permitted only 3 social sites to work with, which ones would you pick?
So it’s over to you for your comments.
Which would you choose (be it social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit, or social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace or Social Messaging/Micro Blogging sites like Twitter or Plurk) – and WHY do you choose the ones you choose?
My Top 3 will be StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Friendfeed. Why? Simply because my friends are there.
StumbleUpon – handy toolbar; actually I just use this for casual browsing; I use del.icio.us for more official bookmarking.
Facebook – it’s where my people at. MySpace is for kids and bands.
Twitter – it’s where my people at. Plurk needs tools like Twhirl to rank.
I only use three b/c of time limitations.
Social bookmarking: Stumbleupon, because my blog seems to fit there better than over at Digg.
Social networking: being a professional thirty-something woman, I feel quite comfortable with Facebook.
Social messaging: I use Twitter b/c all the bloggers I know and like are using it. I do wish the service would be more reliable, though.
I would choose the social bookmarking site Design Float ( http://designfloat.com ) because it’s for designers, which I identify with most; MySpace because I actually talk to people on there, rather than just receiving invites to Applications *cough* Facebook *cough*; and lastly Pownce ( http://pownce.com ) because I think it can be more productive than the other Micro-blogging services.
StumbleUpon — I find great sites when I randomly stumble my chosen topics, and I hope to build business connections there.
Facebook — It’s where my family hangs out.
Plurk — I just played with it last night, and it appeals to my communication style. I can see using it as business tool when my blogs mature and to keep track of friends online.
My pick will be ..
StumbleUpOn.com – Where I found new friends and awesome photos.
MOLI.COM – Very interesting social network that can drive some crazy traffic to your sites.
Sphinn.com – to find some interesting marketing article to read and learn.
Stumble – Easiest and largest traffic getter in the shortest period of time. It’s the easiest for people to “thumb up” your articles thus resulting in easier traffic…at least for my site.
Digg – Although I haven’t hit popular (gotten close) I feel like Digg can be very beneficial and there are always people willing to help you out.
As of today, Plurk – A lot of people are switching to this service. I find it addicting, fun, and easy to communicate with people I work with on a daily basis.
Digg – great community I can relate to, and I have a good friends network
Myspace – I rarely use it but it’s the only way I can talk to some of my friends who’ve moved away
And that’s about the only social media sites I use.
Stumbleupon for content sharing, twitter for connecting, delicious for bookmarking.
Though Friendfeed, Plurk and Mixx are getting more interesting to me by the moment
I don’t engage in much social media to begin with: More of my peers are on Facebook than Myspace so between the two I would keep Facebook.
I use LinkedIn a lot because I’m currently between jobs and actively use its resources to see who I am connected to and then contacting them how they can help me.
I upload many of my photos to Flickr and recently came to appreciate many interactive contests where different people vote on the best photo of two or three that meets a certain theme or technique is best.
I don’t use Twitter; tried it once and it didn’t excite me.
I have accounts at StumbleUpon and Digg but don’t quite see the point; maybe someone here can enlighten me how to use them better. Sharing and commenting on bookmarks?
I’d rather maintain interactions with friends on Facebook, colleagues on Linkedin, and strangers on Flickr. Then there is my blog, which is certainly part of the social media sphere but you don’t include in your above categories.
Take a look at the Brazen Careerist from earlier this week, when Penelope Trunk argues it doesn’t matter so much how many different social media profiles one has, as long as one can brand oneself differently in all of them.
StumbleUpon – Because it’s just plain fun and you can’t beat the traffic from it.
del.icio.us – Because I like to hoard information and be able to find it later.
Twitter – Because it’s a quick and easy way to communicate with real people.
MyBlogLog – I think this is a very overlooked Social Site. MyBlogLog acts a bit like a social aggregator with the “New With” feature. I find myself following a lot of my contacts other social activities there.
StumbleUpon – I like the fact that I can help other blogs with Stumbles.
For the third? Not sure. I’m doing more on Twitter and it is kind of cool to converse with other bloggers, but I am not enjoying all the outages. I also kind of like Del.icio.us. Makes it easy to have bookmarks on multiple computers. I’m not sure I have a strong enough 3rd place yet to say there is one I could not do without.
Facebook — because I’ve been on there since the early days, and almost all my friends are there.
delicious — because I’m just starting to realise what a wonderful way to organise bookmarks it is!
The third is trickier … probably twitter (does that count?) because my colleagues at work and quite a few blogger friends are on there, and it provides a welcome distraction from the day job … ;-)
SU first
Digg second
Reddit or delicious.
I suspect that we’ll look back on the social networking craze and realize that we wasted countless hours twittering, digging and leaving comments on slashdot that no one will ever read.
Oddly enough, my social network is built through various IM tools – they allow me to reach out to others individually, and for others to drop me a line whenever they have something to say.
Twitter, Facebook. I don’t have a third. I’m keeping my options open. :-)
Social Bookmarking: Ma.gnolia; I love the interface.
Social Networking: Facebook; a lot of people I know are there and it’s handy for keeping in touch.
Social Messaging: Twitter; I’ve been there a long time and enjoy it both as a micro-blogging platform and a mini news aggregator that doesn’t distract me as much as my feedreader.
StumbleUpon: To learn about whats new & interesting (plus a great way to kill the last 10 minutes of a “done 10 minutes ago” kind of day.
Del.icio.us: For research, peer to peer referrals and time saving ways to save stumbles I love but don’t really (READ: shouldn’t) have the time to appreciate.
and Twitter: because its a GREAT way to network with people I wouldn’t normally be brave enough to introduce myself to. Its also a great way to get the latest buzz from respected industry leaders.
1. stumbleupon : it’s amusing,interesting and informative and suits my surfing style
2. er!
3. um, er?
I’d pick:
FriendFeed – I find it just too fun to quit right now.
Diigo – I need an online bookmark util and this is the one I’ve settled on.
LinkedIn – No question. LinkedIn is where the business happens.
If I had to limit it to just 3, I would probably pick Digg, Twitter, and Stumbleupon.
In my opinion those are probably the most valuable to my blog. In my niche it is hard to gain readership, as it is highly competitive.
My plan is to keep churning out quality content and I think the readership will come.
Perhaps do some guest posting as well.
Cheers,
The Tech Juice
Mybloglog
Simply because it’s easy to use. Though the spam in your message area can get crazy.
SocialSpark
SocialSpark gives stats on all my blogs including my current Alexa numbers. I can promote my blog, earn income, socialize, and find info all in the same place.
Twitter
Quick, fast, easy and immediate communication. Plus its easy to look at different topics of blogs and bloggers with the search engine.
Twitter, del.icio.us, and Hacker News. To be fair, they’re the only three I actively use and enjoy using. I only “use” Facebook from time to time because everyone else does.
To answer my own question (thank you Darren for relaying):
-Twitter: it’s a great way to get quick snippets of what’s going on and it can be conversational (although I’d like to see this evolve (maybe incorporate the commenting features of Plurk);
FriendFeed: it’s an octopus for almost everything that’s going on and the search feature is pretty powerful;
delicious: it’s simple, usable and seems to have been adopted widely;
i’d go with twitter #1 – it doesn’t drive me huge traffic yet, more trickles but the conversation is good.
facebook – been using it for years on personal level, just started using with separate page for blog and thats been sending steady traffic. and its much easier to find ppl who’d be interested in what i write
myspace – just a fun “little” site, and with all the groups there there’s plenty of chance to promote and community build
My favorite social media sites are:
Social bookmarking: del.icio.us – Great for keeping track of cool sites and also brings me some good traffic.
Social networking: Facebook – Best place to be seen online. I’ve even built my own app for Facebook.
Social News: ValueInvestingNews.com – I didn’t find a social news site that delivered what I wanted, so I built one.
Del.icio.us – I post everything to it (well.. almost everything!).
Facebook – my friends are there.
Twitter – I hate moving to yet another micro-blogging service (But I also hate Twitter’s downtime, which encouraged me to join Plurk just today!).
On a second thought.. forget about Facebook: I think I’m starting to fall in love with FriendFeed!
1) StumbleUpon, for finding stuff randomly
2) del.icio.us, for keeping track of the best (most useful) stuff that I find
3) Facebook, for keeping connected with people who I primarily connect with via face-to-face. This is the only one I actually have a large list of people on, probably because very few of the people I have met in person use other social networking sites.
I’ve only very recently started playing with social media, but so far I’m enjoying:
StumbleUpon – The toolbar is a reminder to actually use it, I’ve found some interesting sites from StumbleUpon.
Twitter and Plurk – Both of these have been kind of fun for me to play with, but more importantly, they’ve exposed me to thoughts, opinions, and websites I’d not have otherwise noticed, and at a very rapid rate. Unfortunately twitter seems rather buggy.
Top 3 would be Del.icio.us, Twitter, Plurk.
I can’t live without my bookmarks, and I’m a little addicted with both twitter and Plurk (already, I know…O.o right?).
Twitter: because I’m too addicted to it and I like my community too much.
Del.icio.us: how else would I keep track of my bookmarks? On my browser? Come on. ;)
Mixx.com: I’ve been really getting into mixx and I find it a lot more useful than digg or other.
Linkedin
Facebook
I use stumbleupon, twitter, and my social networking style, word of mouth! :)
As I’ve mentioned on here before IMO the best social media site for new/small bloggers is Reddit, and by some way. It’s the only one that you have a realistic chance of not only getting to the front page – and therefore generating tens of thousands of uniques – but that you can do it fairly regularly.
It’s odd as I seem to be the only person saying this about Reddit, which makes me think that nobody else knows how to ‘work’ it the right way. All the social bookmarking sites have their own whims and fancies. I feel a guest post coming on, Darren. ;)
You can’t do it on Digg, bar some miracle, unless you’re really part of that community. I’ve had the same submission on Reddit generate 25,000 uniques and less than 20 from Digg. Likewise Del.icio.us.
The best quality of traffic, IMO, comes from SU, but you don’t get the numbers, which of course can have a big impact on your advertising.
I recently closed my Facebook account because I was fed up of endlessly turning down application requests.
For me, especially of late with the endless downtime problems the jury is still out on Twtter. I think it’s another example of a service that’s great for the A-list bloggers, not so much for the smaller fish. Plurk has an interesting interface but it feels a bit 2.0 for me thus far.
So! To answer the question – to be honest, I could stop using all of them without much of a worry, but the only one that’s of any real interest/benefit to me right now is Reddit, so I’ll pick that, and throw in Stumbleupon and Twitter too.
I’d have to say:
* Del.icio.us
* Twitter
* Facebook
I really lilke Ma.gnolia A LOT but it’s waaay too slow for looking stuff up.
If I had to pick 3:
1. Digg (just because its the biggest)
2. StumbleUpon (alot of my content has done very well there)
3. WeGame (because its a video game related video social site, and my videos have the 2nd most views on there)
btw checking out Plurk now, thanks Darren!
Twitter – such a great way to give and receive useful information and correspond with others who have similar interests,
diigo – I’ve been using del.icio.us for three years but have recently switched to diigo. It contains the community aspect of social bookmarking that del.icio.us lacks. And you can post to both simultaneously so I am still maintaining my del.icio.us account
I’m not sure about my third as I only minimally participate in other social networks. Perhaps Facebook, as I have found people there that I haven’t talked to since I was a kid. But then again, maybe friendfeed, although I don’t like it as much as I feel I ought to. Or maybe lastfm as I have used that account for a couple of years and am able to discover new music from like-minded listeners.
Stumbleupon because it seems to provide good traffic levels and is easy to use with the toolbar. Although, with the toolbar up, you can easily stumble away and hour or two without even realizing it.
ShowHype.com because my main sites are TV and movie related.
Twitter because it is easy to use, when it’s working, and sometimes you only need a few words to convey a thought or to point to a site, etc.
Now, if I just took the time to really use them.
I only use two now Digg and del.icio.us
I have been on Digg for several years, and I think it is fun. When I don’t have anything else to do, I poke around on there and find things that are interesting
Brian wrote this above – “del.icio.us – Because I like to hoard information and be able to find it later.”
I completely agree with that. I move computers so much, that keeping bookmarks on one computer doesn’t really make sense. But also, I like to do searches on del.icio.us. Google is good for some kinds of search, but if 400 people on del.icio.us have bookmarked something that has the tags you are looking for, it is probably worth checking out.
Based on what Sheamus said about Reddit just above, I am going to give it a try as well.
I would pick: Facebook, Twitter, and StubleUpon.
I think MySpace is dying out. Too cluttered. Too many ads. Too much spam.
I’d say ..
* Flickr
* Stumbleupon (tho the love is fading there)
* plurk instead of twitter. Seems to be a much better fit for me.
StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Twitter
Agh! There are too many to choose from.
– Flickr – because my photos are all on there already and I like being able to share images with my family and friends.
– Stumbleupon – I nearly said del.icio.us, but I use Foxmarks to store my bookmarks online, and that’s all I ever really did with del.icio.us. So, Stumbleupon it is because I discover a ton of new sites whenever I use it, and it’s driven some nice traffic to my site from time to time.
– Plurk – because I like having a place to vent my mental diarrhoea and chat with my mates. Would have said Twitter, but it’s just too flaky at the moment.
Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
I’d use StumbleUpon for the traffic, Twitter for the instantaneous simple communication, and Squidoo for the community.
Twitter, StumbleUpon, and BlogCatalog are really the only three that I use. So I guess my answer is pretty obvious…
Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us. Pretty much because they’re the only ones I really use now. I have accounts on all the others, but hardly use them. I don’t really use Facebook to its full potential either. I love De.icio.us… interesting that social bookmarking and social networking come under a social media banner. I used to think of them as social bookmarking, separate to media/networking. The former makes sense though.
My three would be xanga.com, linkedin.com and mybloglog.com.
XANGA I can upload mp3 and record audio, upload video, blog, vlog, embedd almost any widget, groups, subscriptions, photo albums, bulletin, pulse [internal twitter]. AUDIO and VIDEO uploads and recorded AUDIO blog and VIDEO Vlog generate universal widgets to embed elsewhere with a simple and clean interface.
mybloglog.com : Combine Google RSS Reader, Facebook, technorati. ADD a dash of Linkedin.com. OFFER LIVE HOSTS representing all companies from WEB 2.0, THEN got recently purchased by YAHOO. This is the best site I have joined in 10 years.
LinkedIn.com : Professional social network with features similiar to YAHOO ANSWERS Q&A and more. Represents the higher social career networkers with experience and great insights into the business, trafficking, media, OFFICE software and functions and administration. NOT teens or bohemians like myself included. CONNECTIONS and site social etiquette is more introductory and tentative before launching yourself to total strangers for friends. THIS will build business and open a lot of eyes.
Combine those 3 sites with stand alone browser from flock.com. Winner 2008 WEBBY AWARDS : [BEST SOCIAL Network] tool.
AND
access to blogspot.com [technically a BLOGGER and not a SOCIAL NETWORK].
IF the rest of the social networks disappeared, with this combination, everything would be fine.
1. Twitter – it is rapidly addictive, and already populated by a mass of interesting people who are frighteningly current. It takes some balancing between making it your life and logging in so infrequently that you have no idea what is going on, but the good news is there always IS something going on.
2. socialmedia.alltop.com – there are almost always interesting blog posts available from sites with something useful to say. Favorite points: it’s easy to view & easy to read & when you mouseover a link, you can preview an excerpt of the article before deciding if you want to click through.
3. Facebook – I resisted facebook for awhile, but it’s a good way to stay in touch with old friends and has a clean interface. A lot of really creative applications, but the notifications can get overwhelming, to both your inbox & your layout. As a positive, there is an option to turn off notifications once you’ve reached your saturation point.
1. none
2. none
3. none