Social Networks: Can You Still Follow?
About two weeks ago, I signed up for Plurk (my profile). I liked it, since, in contrast to Twitter, it’s easy to follow conversations. Te-Ge just published a great intro to Plurk: 10 Minute Guide to Plurk.
And only yesterday, Steven Humphrey invited me to a new social network called Fast Pitch.
I signed up to see what it was and immediately received an invitation to join a group. Few minutes later, a second invite was sent to me. I still have to investigate this one.
So how about you. Can you still follow all developments in social networks?
Below are some interesting links that possibly make it easier for you to follow what’s going on.
At Marketing Pilgrim, Janet Meiners writes about Men More Likely to be on LinkedIn, Flickr. She gives an interesting overview of several social network sites divided in age groups. And of course she also tells you where women hang out most.
Liz Strauss has an interesting post. What can you do with 1,000 friends at Facebook when your car breaks down? Read it at Social Networking: It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Whether You Know Yourself
My good friend Willie Crawford, who is always looking at the practical side of things, published an outstanding post, explaining how you can market your products and services on Twitter.
In this post, Willie also gives away a free ebook on How To Bookmark Effectively For Massive Free Website Traffic. You can, although it’s part of a GiveAway event, download it completely free and even without giving your email address, but if you are smart, you may sign up for more interesting advice.
If you’re in the coaching business, you most definitely want to read Are The Social Bookmarkers Doing It For Your Coaching Business? by Paul Duxbury, the coaching expert.
Furthermore, I’ve read some very good advice from Jeremiah Owyang about Build Your Network Before You Need Them, the real essence of building a social network.
And did you know that the secret behind long lasting relationships is reciprocity - returning calls? The more often you call each other, the longer your relationship. That’s the outcome of a recent study that Maki uses to explain relationships in online social networks. That’s an interesting read (as always with Maki).
Finally, if you want to know which social networking sites are the most visited according to Alexis, read Jack Humphrey’s Top 10 Social Sites By Alexa Ratings.
Have fun reading.
Let me know what you think.
Post your comments below.
Tags: social media, social networking, social networks, Web2.0
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June 20th, 2008 at 9:30 am
In my opinion you can never have a meaningfull relationship only comminicating electronically.That be it on facebook, twitter or any socialnetwork.
Socialnetworking is in fact a step back in human evolution.
We can only moove up again when we start developing new ways of human interaction, which actually involves real people.
News ways of communicating, that takes good use of our contiousness and not electronic communication.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I had registration on a few social network sites, but I did not benefit at all from them. All I got was just molest and harrassment. Last week I deleted all of my membership, except my Myspace, but most likely I will delete it too.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I was just discussing the same thing concisely with Jason Falls yesterday.
I registered with Plurk, intend to test it during weekend, but will only use one technology over another.
Just can’t keep up with all at once. Making the most out of each is better than being everywhere and get average results from all, I guess.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:07 am
Twiter is a good resource of traffic. I noticed substantial traffic increase when i twit, more than any other social networks combined. (not even facebook, not even myspace-and i got a lot of people in there)
The easiest way to build up subscription in twitter is to follow many others, twit frequently, and reply to twits of others(increases awareness)
Plurk is something i never tried.. should put it to test as well when i have free time..
June 21st, 2008 at 2:14 am
Perhaps the most useful article on Social Networking that I have read with some VERY useful links. It made me also think about the quality (segmentation) of my various networks rather than just numbers.
Thanks,
Rakesh
June 21st, 2008 at 3:59 am
In my opinion Social networking is both a step forwards and backwards. I now have the ability to keep in touch with people from school who i did lose contact with back, and i do see them quite often. But on the other foot i tend to get emails and Instant messages from people who i would now consider very close friends instead of the phone calls which are a little more personal as you can hear them.
Like everything involved with ICT social networking has 2 sides to the coin.
June 21st, 2008 at 4:42 am
Great post. It is so hard to keep up with all of the social networks. It takes a lot of time to “seed” relationships, but I do believe you can make excellent contacts and build relationships online. I have folks online I have communicated with for several years, so I know it is do-able.
Thanks so much for new links to try. Have an awesome weekend!
June 21st, 2008 at 7:29 am
Social Networking is a very good way to meet new people and know new things.
There were so many things I could educate myself on with my networks on Facebook and Myspace. I will not be surprised to see Social Networking going to the next gen level with amazing offerings. We need to think of the unthinkable.
Cheers!!
June 21st, 2008 at 7:03 pm
There is a lot of social networking now. Some is free, other is pay you. I think friendster is good one. However, they do not allow us to insert javascript anymore. I have account in myspace, 3gb, etc. Just follow and don’t know I have to do with those account
June 21st, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I am most active on linkedin, flickr and orkut and I keep getting new invitations and requests for recommending friends (in linked in). I think there is a scope of building more communities with social networks based on your hobbies
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Thanks for the great list, Case, and for mentioning the Guide to Plurk on it. I’m enjoying discovering all Plurk has to offer. I’ve read and enjoyed Paul’s and Willie’s articles, and now I’m looking forward to reading the other articles you’ve mentioned.
Christian, I know from experience that you can have meaningful relationships that develop exclusively over electronic media. I met my husband in a chat room, and for months, that and IMs were the only way we communicated. Eventually we switched to phone calls, but that was after we knew we were going to get married. Because of location, we met only 5 times before the wedding, but being online allowed us to get to know each other just as well, if not better than, we would have had we lived close enough to date.
In case you’re thinking online relationships are short-term, we celebrated our 11th anniversary a couple months ago.
Hmm, maybe that’s why I enjoy exploring social networks so much.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I guess it depends on how you communicate with each other. There are lots of social network created and some people don’t take it seriously and they join just for fun. But for me, it’s healthier to develop a good relationship if you both communicate online and offline.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:17 am
To be very true, I am afraid to see number if increasing social media sites. A few year ago, I was introduced to Hi5, I was afraid to provide my msn username/password there but nothing happened to that. After a few months, I feel that Hi5 is just a crap. One day I got 100 visits from stumblupon, you know, all of such traffic is just a crap. I don’t like social media sites anymore. Perhaps I am a little conservative.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I actually really love Facebook and I hate Myspace. The problem with Myspace is that is is overrun with spammers and garbage. Facebook has actually managed to slow down the spammers and put in plenty of safeguards to prevent against that kind of activity. The most useless feature ever created is Myspace bulletins in my opinion. I still need to check out the others like Hi5, Plurk, and Twitter once I get some free time.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Honestly, I find with the volume of info that flows through, social networks are hard to follow. I use them to help me earn online among other things so I just pick a few and keep focused on those developing the profiles to aid myself and my website. I find it is more manageable this way..
June 25th, 2008 at 12:38 am
In my view, social networking site is very interesting. I have also use some of them like myspace,facebook. It helps us to make friends online.But among them I hate tagged site.Anybody can post anything photo in that site.I found adult sites photo using in that site.I don’t like so.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Yeah, facebook and hi5 are 2 best online community and they are big hits. These are 2 great networks and to compete withthem will be almost impossible. The other networks are trying to compete with them but i think they will not be able to reach that height.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Thanks for the info, I just launched my own domain and I have been trying to figure out how to market it! Thanks for the links to the other articles, I’m new to this dofollow movement.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Yeah Many thanks
Now a days Dofollow issue has been so much famous. And this is an important issue in link building so thanks for the info regarding this
June 26th, 2008 at 1:13 am
I agree with Christian. True relationships require face to face interaction. Yes technology has helped us overcome differences, but let’s be honest, nothing beats a hand shake and looking someone in the eye.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:23 am
I think when it real comes down to it, and you want to invest your time and money in another person, you need to meet face to face.
As a composer and producer, I spent a lot of time in my studio alone - maybe 75 % of my working hours.
My mood is so much better if I have had some sessions or meetings during the day.
Human contact and interaction is important - not only for business - its really what its all about in my opinion.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Thanks Case, these are really valuable links. As a 50 year old male - with daughters constantly on Facebook, My Space, MSN - I still feel a bit of an alien when trying to embrace social networking. I now have 101 friends on Stumbleupon (including your good self), but I’m still poor at networking. My current goal is to interact more with people who comment (properly) on my site.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Thanks everyone for your comments. It proves that this is a versatile topic.
The main criteria, whether or not to use the Social Networks, in my opinion are:
1. personal interest and preferences
2. value derived from SN versus value of time spend on other things
3. finding good SN’s and finding great people
I don’t have thousands of friends on SN’s, since I sincerely want to know who’s who. So I’m left with a couple of hundred, but I know who they are and value each of them.
It’s kind of checking comments on this blog. I always visit new commenters’ sites, just to learn who they are. The very first thing I do is look for an ‘About’ page.
Building community!
June 28th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Great post. It is amazing how many social networks are flooding the net. For some reason I have stayed with myspace the whole time because that is where the people I know are. I have thought of changing to a more focused site, but I know I won’t be able to convince the people I know to move over.
June 29th, 2008 at 4:10 am
On another blog, I was reading about death of social media sites and how they are influencing other internet surfers. All social media sites are under attack of marketers and they are only using it to promote products and sites. Even it is difficult to get something out of that other than crap and false information.
June 29th, 2008 at 4:42 am
>>they are only using it to promote products and sites
Funny comment. You come in here and promote your products by linking to a sales page while I explicitly ask you not to do that.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I think the good questio - or one of them anyway - is what will come instead of social networks as they are now. Will they stay there but just change functionality or will something totally different happen when we are all on our handheld mobile devices instead.
christian
July 16th, 2008 at 12:05 am
yes, i follow because,Through Social Media Marketing the internet marketers can learn to tie up with the users and it also helps them to reach the targeted audiences through social media websites like Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Wikipedia. These websites are growing at a fast pace with audiences who want to discover innovative information based on community interests, sharing views and thoughts, voting for comments etc.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
Yes, I agree with Jeremiah about “Build your network before you need them” It is nice to have a network in place and continue to build it from time to time. But my greatest problem is how to follow them up. I sign up at some social network site make some friends, but did not follow them up, because I have not seen any benefit from it. I now agreed, that time will come when one will need them one way or the other.
Regards,
Lovely
August 14th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Interesting post by your friend Willie, I have recently started using LinkedIn as part of my professional development effort in getting high quality clients for marketing, but I have yet to use Twitter. I started off using MySpace but found that the target audience was not at all suited for my need.
In summary, find the group that fits your needs before settling on a social network, and then expand from there.
-James
August 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I believe social bookmarking sites is a better method to gain massive traffic and reputation online. Instead of spending the extra time creating and populating your profiles, bookmarking sites allow you to easily share your site content with millions of people.