Social Networks 101: Making Sense Of Social Networks
Written By: sujanpatel On June 13th, 2007 | 5 Comments
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.îThere are thousands of social networks on the web. The biggest question most people ask is ìwhich one is right for me?î When evaluating social networks, you want you want to make sure that you can contribute to it, and most importantly benefit from it.
So, which one should you join? Below are a few that are worth looking into: 43things.com is a social networking site that asks the question ìWhat do you want to do with your life? You enter what you want to do with your life and based on the tags that you use, it connects you with users with similar goals. You can see how others are working toward their goals and encourage them and get encouragement yourself. This concept is also known as folksonomy.
MySpace, BlackPlanet, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo 360 and Xanga, are among the most popular social networking websites. Most of them offer an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, forums, groups, events, photos, music, videos and classifieds. MySpace is currently the world’s fifth most popular English-language website and the third most popular website in the United States. It receives over 80% of visits to online social networking websites.
Facebook was originally developed for college and university students but is now open to anyone who has an email address. You can join networks related to high school, college, place of employment, or geographic region.
Flickr is a photo-sharing website to help people make their photos available to people who matter to them. You can keep your images private or share them with the world of with groups of people who share your interests. Images can be tagged, allowing ease of finding them or ones like them in the future.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, used for professional networking. It allows you to connect with past and current co-workers, clients, venders, and other professionals. You can receive and give recommendations for the work you have done or received. It also has a job engine allowing you to respond to job postings and the company can view your online profile.
Twitter is a blogging service that allows users to send short text-based updates to their blogs as well as to twitter.com. You can track your friends and colleagues by checking out their updates. Senders can restrict the delivery to those in their circle of friends or display for everyone to see. Messages can be posted through twitter.com, SMS or by instant messenger.
You best bet is to visit a number of social networking sites and see which one fits your interests and goals. Ask your friends and colleagues which ones they belong to. Most importantly, have fun with it.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
[...] Read the full overview [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 6:01 am
I think Twitter is more than that. All my statistics says that a lot of people is comming from twitter. I’m interesting in give more information to twitter twits with nanoformats (http://twitternanoformats.wikispaces.com).
June 26th, 2007 at 3:42 am
[...] Social Networks 101: Making Sense Of Social Networks The biggest question most people ask is ìwhich one is right for me?î When evaluating social networks, you want you want to make sure that you can contribute to it, and most importantly benefit from it. So, which one should you join? … [...]
August 20th, 2007 at 11:27 am
[...] If you are the average person then the following options are worth looking into for managing all of your social networks in one place: [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
[...] Most of us know Facebook as a social network to connect with our college friends. Now that Facebook is open to everyone, how can businesses benefit? Is Facebook is succeeding as entertainment and as rolodex for your friends, or is it serving a useful business purpose? Business users are joining it because it is the hot new platform and everyone is talking about it. So, how do you leverage it for business? 1)You can create applications using the Facebook Platform. This is a great viral marketing platform and proves very effective for 1-to-1 marketing. 2)You can use Facebook as a focus group to evaluate ideas and to your Facebook applications. Also Facebook groups allow you to create groups for your organization. 3)If you rely on access to people, Facebook is for you. You can build your network and leverage your friend’s network. 4)A blog is a business card whereby Facebook is a rolodex. Did you meet a prospect at an event or social gathering and then add them as a friend? Now you can see what their interests are, and more importantly, see a picture of them so next time you meet them you will be able to recognize the face and the name. You will also be able to get introduced to new prospects via your friends. 5)One to one marketing is possible on Facebook. You will know your friend’s demographic as well as psychographic information. 6)Do you have a business blog? You can now import your posts directly into Facebook via Facebook Notes 7)But, I think the best business feature is market research. Following the interests of your friends and the groups that you join, allows you to spot trends. Ask questions and tap into the collective intelligence of Facebook. So, if you are not using Facebook for business now is the time to start. Bookmark: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]