Social Networks You Can’t Live Without - Micro Blogging Social Networking Sites Mini Review

Don't forget to subscribe to iwebis RSS feed. You can also Subscribe to iwebis by Email Thanks for visiting!

Ok, maybe you can live without these social networks but I thought the title would be more exciting with ‘can’t live without” in it .

Before I begin this review I want to explain how I define social networking. With all the various titles going around it can become frustrating and confusing. Social media, micro blogging and social bookmarking are all related to social networking if you ask me. If a website allows you to network with others, I see it as a social network. Networking already involves socializing whether it is for business or friendship. Even though a website forum may not but the hip Web 2.0 social network, I still consider it a social network. Forums don’t offer as much as Myspace but do still serve the same purpose, which is creating space for people to network.

Whether you agree with me or not on how social network should be defined you can’t deny sites like Twitter and Pounce are not growing in popularity. Today I am going to offer my thoughts on four social micro blogging networks. Don’t forget to follow my Queen of Social Network Marketing project for more updates.

Twitter

When I first heard of Twitter I thought it would be a fad that would soon fade away. I just couldn’t understand how it could be useful to people. I also thought it encouraged a one sided conversation. With a question like “What are you doing?”, it just didn’t seem like it would offer much two way discussion. Well, I was wrong. Twitter has proved to be a great way to inform, be informed and to network.

Within 140 characters can offer your follower a few things, seemingly unimportant chatter (can be important when building friendships), the basic human need for interaction and sharing of useful information. A lot can be said within 140 characters.

About a month ago decided to give Twitter another chance. Everybody else was so into it, so I thought I must be missing something. As a build my network of followers (followers are your contacts), I am now able to understand why people find it to be a useful tool. From a marketing standpoint you can get the word out on new projects or events. You can offer your followers very up-to-date information. Since it’s much less involved then email you can all your clients and customers short and quick updates.

The more followers you have the more people you reach. This is not exactly a secret but some might be wondering, how do you get more friends? To date I have 227 friends . Very few people of these where people I knew before I started following them. Most of the people I follow are followed by people I respect or am intrigued by in cyberspace. I am currently following 675 people and have around 212 updates.

What I have discovered is that many people will reciprocate a follow which is how I have gained about 90% of my followers in a little over a month. I pretty much follow everyone because if I decide I don’t want to follow them I can always remove them from my list.

Twitter has also been the able to inspire a lot of coders and web developers to create a lot of useful Twitter tools. Mashable offers us a list of 60+ Twitter tools in an article that was written back in September of 2007. Since that article was posted I am sure their are even more tools available.

The way I have been using Twitter is a balance of some random personal stuff, web search discoveries, iwebis article post updates and website project updates. Though I have not looked at my Google Analytics stats to be sure, I have found that iwebis rss subscriptions have gone up by about 30 readers this last month and a half. I am betting that most of these subscribers have come from Twitter users since I didn’t really do much in the way of marketing other ways. BlogCatalog could have brought some of the subscribers as well. I send messages to Twitter using the website, Twhirl, cell phone texting and Ping.fm.

I am making my own mental notes of proper Twitter etiquette. Though there are not any spoken or written rules (at least that I know of ) on proper Twitter etiquette I have considered unfollowing some users because of the way they use this service. My goal is to be a valuable member to all the networks I join including Twitter. I try to make myself a “follow worthy” Twitterer by using my allotted 140 characters to offer useful information and human connection (meaning I am allow people get to know me).

Wow! When I started writing this post I thought I was going to do a mini review on four micro blogging sites but instead ended up writing only about Twitter. Since this post is long enough, I am going to split it into two reviews. I am pretty sure the next three reviews will really be ‘mini’ because they offer a lot of the same benefits as Twitter. Sorry to tease you like this but if you want to read about what I think about the other three micro blogging social networks (Pownce, Tumblr and Jaiku) you will have to come back tomorrow or you can subscribe to iwebis rss feed or get email updates. And of course you can also follow me on Twitter.

HerProBlog.COM is also on Twitter.

Until tomorrow!