M5:D19 (D427) Social Networking 101 (Part 1 of 2)

Today we often hear the terms Web 2.0 and Social Networking.  These are related issues that I plan to discuss further in this two part series on social networking.

Web 2.0

The idea of Web 2.0 revolves around applications that have interactive features.  Fresh and useful data is the core of Web 2.0.  The primary focus of any Web 2.0 application is participation rather than publishing.  The idea is to trust others to provide reliable content.  Blog comments are one example of this type of focus.  You may have noticed that many news articles now allow you to make comments.  This is a Web 2.0 application.

Social Networking

Social networking applications involve like-minded people who launch a highly interactive service based upon their common interests.  These applications generally have easy to use communication tools.  They link people together so that information is shared.  The idea is to get to know alot of different people.  You gain people’s trust when they get to know you on a personal level and that’s the entire point of social networking.  There are many examples of social networking applications.  The most common applications are previewed below via screenshots.

Facebook:

Facebook is an extremely involved social networking site.  On this site you are able to link up with other people and share information.  I have found Facebook to be extremely useful for both marketing and personal purposes.  I will discuss the marketing perspective in Part 2.  The personal side is obvious.  You are able to link up to other friends and stay in touch with what is going on in their lives.  While this was not my initial purpose for Facebook, I have learned that an important part of social networking is getting to know other people

MySpace:

MySpace is similar to Facebook.  It is more aimed at a younger crowd in my opinion and definitely leans towards personal use rather than business use.

Twitter:

Twitter is an interesting tool.  All tweets (as they are called) are limited to 140 characters.  You follow people and they follow you.  You are able to see the tweets of those you follow.  You can then reply to them or add to them as you see fit.  What ends up happening is a giant discussion breaks out between many different people.  Twitter is a very useful social networking application because it enables you to get to know alot of people on a personal level.  I have made many friends via Twitter.  At the same time, I’ve found some extremely useful information through the tweets that I read.

Friendfeed:

This service combines the feeds from various places (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) into one location.  It makes it easier to stay up with what your friends are doing, but I don’t really like using Friendfeed that much.  The theory here is the same as the other social networking sites—you connect to people who connect you to other people and that just gives you massive exposure.

Hellotxt:

As you get more and more involved with social networking you will want to update your status on a regular basis.  Hellotxt is an application that allows you to update a multitude of social networking sites all at once via the Hellotxt interface.  At the same time, all the previous statuses are saved for your review.  I use this site alot, even from my cell phone. 

Conclusion: