After reading the Mashable article Twitter, Facebook, Digg: Can You Join too Many Social Networks? I couldn’t help to think about the social networks that I am belong to and how I use them.
I, like many others, joined Facebook while I was in college as a way to easily communicate with friends. It caught on like wildfire. It helped me get back in touch with friends that I had not talked to in many years. Like many others, this was our first exposure to social networking.
As I left school I still used it to keep in touch with friends and share pictures but I found myself using it less and less. I update my status on Facebook mobile via my Blackberry or through a multiple update service like Ping.fm, but rarely visit the site itself.
I have found Twitter facinating. Never would I have thought that I would use a service like this but it has become very useful. I use Twitter for a wide varity of things from keeping up with breaking news to advertising new posts to my blog. With its recent explosive growth, almost 752% in 2008, I find myself looking for other ways to integrate this service into my workflow.
More and more services are integration with Twitter. Twittercal allows Twitter to integrate with Google Calender. As a user of Remember the Milk I am able to add tasks via Twitter and the user rtm. These are the ones that I currently use there are many others.
I use LinkedIn in many of the same ways that I used Facebook but on a professional level. Through LinkedIn I am able network with my professional contacts. As my professional network expands LinkedIn provides me a way to expand my reputation as a subject matter expert by answering questions. It will even has a job list for aiding for in a job search.
Flickr is much less social for me as it is a mechanism to share photos with family and friends. I have recently extended my use of Flickr to including images for posting on my blog. With our subscription to U-verse TV we are able to view our photos on any TV in our house.
Del.icio.us is used for social bookmarking. I am still beginning to leverage the power of this social network. Del.icio.us is a great way to bookmark items that are potential blog ideas.
