There’s an absolute plethora of social networking websites out there now. They come in many different shapes and sizes, abilities, disabilities, problems, solutions, and cover pretty well every subject under the sun.
But which ones should I join up to?
That’s a reasonably easy question to answer. All of them! Well maybe not every single social networking site that rears its head on Mashable, but you should get yourself signed up on all the sites that are specific to your interests and / or blogging topics.
For example, I blog about photography, video, product reviews, cooking, social networking and a few other random things so I’m on social networking sites like Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.TV, Flickr, Last.FM, Facebook, Myspace, Virb, Friend Feed, LinkedIn and errmm I’m probably forgetting some but those are the core sites that I post to, stream to, link to, republish to and whatever else to.
Going through the above list there’s quite a number of overlaps, eg. Digg vs. StumbleUpon, YouTube vs. Vimeo vs. BlipTV, and Facebook vs. Myspace vs. Virb.
So why all the overlaps?
Everybody is different and well different people are on different websites for different reasons, eg. I really like the way BlipTV handles the videos I post and that I just have a simple block of code for my channel and whenever I publish a new video to BlipTV it automatically hits the front page of my blog, however I know more people use YouTube and Vimeo so to still bring solid traffic in from those sites I also publish the video there.
Another example would be the Facebook vs. Myspace vs. Virb network, all of them have very different user demographics so to actually get the most value out of the potential traffic you get involved with all of them.
Of course being involved in so many different websites can be very time consuming keeping people updated with your blogging and what not, not to mention quite a big distraction. Which is where websites like Friend Feed popup which basically allows you to network the updates from all your endeavors onto a single page. You can also subscribe / friend other people so you can easily keep up with the goings on in their worlds.
Aside from Friend Feed you’ve also got plenty of different browser plugins for Firefox, and even better is the browser that’s built to handle pretty well all of these websites Flock. Flock allows you to enter all of your different usernames and passwords into some handy forms and from there whenever you and your friends update one of your social accounts you get the update in Flock.
And lastly, for those not wanting to further slow Firefox down with plugins, or who don’t like the look of Flock, most of these social networking websites have many different RSS feed options that you can subscribe to in your reader of choice.
Pretty well everyday a new social networking website pops up, and every second day another one disappears. Choose wisely, stick to the core ones that have been around for a while, but also don’t be afraid to jump onto one of the new ones if it feels like it might last.
Anyway, if you’re on one of the previously mentioned websites and we’re not friends, go and friend me now!
Catch you around the web somewhere.