Update (09/14/08): While most of the information here is factually correct, my use of each social network has changed drastically since December of 2007.

The web is more interesting when you can use it to find long lost acquaintances, share web sites, and interact with your friends and colleagues. The term social gets attached to web sites and networks but its hard for me to think of them as being social. I’m not really interacting with people on social sites, I’m interacting with information about people. But, its pretty clear that these sites have changed the way we use the internet; its not just shopping and email anymore. I like to think of my collection of social networks as one big personal information manager.

So, in order to expose myself further to the online world (and hopefully, get to know others), here are the social networks that I’m apart of and how I use them. I’m not pretending to have just discovered any of these. They’ve been around awhile but I recently came across someone’s blog where they shared their StumbleUpon account and everyone noticed. I listed the applications in order of my preference but, before you go trying all of them, please be aware of each’s reason for existing (for example, please don’t contact me via LinkedIn if you want to see my movie preferences).

LinkedIn

For knowledge workers, this one is a no-brainer. If you’d like to have a simple, clear statement of your professional self, LinkedIn is the place to start. Then, you gain connections and access to their connections and soon you have a solid network of business contacts. This is one that you try to keep updated like a resume.

You can view my LinkedIn public profile and, once you’re registered, we can get connected.

Technorati

Technorati is where you find out what’s being discussed in the blogosphere. Its broken out into categories and channels. You can “favorite” a blog and as you use Technorati you gain “authority”. The more authority you have, the more your opinions matter. My Technorati profile is here.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is becoming an important place to share web pages you stumble upon and then, if you’re looking to get your own group of online followers, people will stumble upon your blog and yada, yada, yada… you conquer the internet. No longer are people just googling, they are stumbling the internet. Here’s my StumbleUpon page. If you feel like adding me as a friend, please do so.

Facebook

I couldn’t figure out whether to list Facebook before StumbleUpon or the other way around. Facebook is quickly becoming the de facto place to network with online friends. I think its still true that people are moving from MySpace to Facebook in large numbers, probably because MySpace attracted the early adopters, i.e. the teenagers, and it quickly became known as the place to post pictures and videos of drunken frat parties. So, the stigma became “MySpace is for the immature, Facebook is for those with a life.” Facebook was originally billed as the place to connect with old friends from high school and college. I signed up years ago and found no one. After forgetting that I signed up, I got three “friends” requests from old acquaintances in one day and its been a steady progression since then.

Facebook’s open API has allowed developers to create applications for people to share just about anything, including pictures, video, movies tastes, sports teams, information from other social networks, grass roots causes, … you name it, someone has probably created a Facebook app to share it.

You’ll have to register first but then we can become Facebook friends. Here’s my profile page.

Digg

About a year ago, Digg was the number one social news site. I’m not sure where it sits today. What attracted people to this service, rather than, say, del.icio.us, is that once you digg an article on the web, other people can vote on it and it has the potential of showing up in the list of top sites on the front page. StumbleUpon seems more like you’re sharing articles where Digg feels like your just submitting so that’s why I place SU higher in priority than Digg. Nonetheless, I think they’re basically the same. Other people might disagree.

Ma.gnolia

I’ve mentioned del.icio.us (which gets the award for most clever name). There’s also Reddit (the copy cat site). Together with Ma.gnolia, these make up the three social bookmarking systems that I’ve used. Ma.gnolia is prettier to look at and easier to use. Its also more intuitive in how you can make and join groups of people with similar interests. The only drawback is that its not as heavily used as the others so its more populated with web developers and designers (early adopters, those more likely to be influenced by aesthetics). I don’t use it all that often, but here’s my Ma.gnolia page.

Last.fm

Last (no pun intended) but not least is the social music site Last.fm. Once you sign up, you download the client, it looks into your iTunes history list and configures new music you might be interested in. Then, based upon what you listen to from there on, it comes up with more music for your listening pleasure. They call this process “scrobbling”. More importantly, your friends can recommend music that you will like. Visit my Last.fm user page to see my listening history and become a music friend.

Two Others

Two other social sites that I use are Flickr and Twitter but I only use them occasionally. I’ve used Flickr for years now and its been a great place to post pictures and share them with people. However, I haven’t really used it like I should. If I were more into photography, I’d be all over the social aspects of Flickr. Right now though, its a good place to put pictures of my kids. So, here’s my Flickr site

You can sometimes see what I’m doing through out the day on Twitter.

Conclusion

Wow! This has gotten longer than I ever thought it would be. But it was good to list all of these applications to get some perspective on the whole group. It would be a very bad thing to lose yourself in all of them at once. For pure business and online contacts, LinkedIn is the most important of them all. For online ventures and their related marketing, I use Technorati, StumbleUpon, and to a lesser extent, Digg and Ma.gnolia. The remaining three are just for fun, even though Facebook is used by some for business purposes and Last.fm is an important part of my working day. You’ve got to have good music when you work.