Social media sites are the current phenomenon (try spelling that after a couple of glasses of wine) on the Internet.
There are heaps of them out there:
- StumbleUpon
- MySpace
- Digg
- Kirtsy
Just to name a few.
I’ve joined a couple of them myself, but I don’t know if I fully understand what they’re about.
I have a Facebook account (click here for my Profile Page. And maybe join my friends list). There are lots of little cutsie things to send to friends on Facebook but I’m not quite sure what else to do with it. To be honest I find it a little bewildering. I tried finding some old school friends from my life back in England but had no luck.
Are any of you on Facebook? If so it would be good to add you to my list of friends (maybe you could leave your link to your profile page in a comment below if you would like other Scraps of Mind readers to find you too). And perhaps you could help me discover what I’m not getting out of Facebook. I’d really like to use it more but I need more understanding of how. I’m sure that some of you have a Facebook account and are much more savvy than I so please share. I’m probably not alone in trying to work it out.
StumbleUpon
I’m more up to speed with StumbleUpon having used it for several months now. I have built up a list of friends (here is my Profile Page if you want to add me as a friend) and it’s fun Stumbling their favourite pages. I also enjoy using the Stumble toolbar to find new scrapbooking sites and give them a traffic boost by Stumbling them if I think their content is worth sharing with others.
I’ve discovered how to target my Stumbling to specific topics (like ‘digital scrapbooking’ for instance) when I want to focus my viewing.
I’d have to say that StumbleUpon is my favourite social media site. But that might be because I feel I have more of an understanding of it than the others.
Digg
I’ve started playing on Digg a bit in recent times. Still trying to find my way around how that works and whether there are enough people who share my interests on it to connect with. Here’s my Profile Page if you would like to add me as a friend.
Kirtsy
Kirtsy is like Digg for Women. It covers a huge spectrum of topics but it’s populated by women so the focus is obviously on stuff that is of greater interest to women. It’s actually a cool place for finding interesting things to read. And like Digg, you can vote them up (or down) to get them to more people’s attention.
This voting thing is the most empowering thing about all these social media sites. Instead of just passively reading information, you get the chance to to be a part of influencing the popularity of articles and sites. You become a player rather than just a spectator.
Not being a Texting sort of a person (if you could see me painfully keying in a message on my phone it would make your fingers clench with frustration) I suspect Twitter is not for me. I believe it is mainly focussed on phone text messages. But I know nothing about it so if any of you use Twitter, your views and information would be warmly welcomed.
MySpace
I don’t have a MySpace account. It looks to me to be similar to a blog and since Scraps of Mind keeps me fully occupied I know that I have no space in my life for another blog (although I’ve just set up a Squidoo Lens called Digital Scrapbooking 4 You). Am I wrong about that? Is MySpace more than a blog format? If any of you have a MySpace account please fill in my ignorance here.
And there are many more.
New ones springing up each day.
They are great for improving the interactivity of the Internet. Viewers are now players in what goes on, rather than just spectators. And the power of the vote on many of these sites gives readers the ability to influence what is successful or not on the Internet.
Do you belong to any Social Media sites? I’d love to hear from you if you do. And maybe a bit of info on what the site is about as well.
If anyone is ever searching for me on the Internet, I use the name karooch pretty much everywhere I’m registered with. So I hope to connect with a few more of you out there.
Other related Posts:
Let your Blog Stumble…it won’t hurt.
Earn some money with your Blog
What Everybody Ought to Know about Blog Carnivals
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Karen, I added you to my friends list at Facebook
It IS overwhelming, I agree, so many add-ons! The main reason for having a Facebook account – for me – is to keep in touch with online friends and let them know I care. Sending a gift, hug, teddybear… (fill in the dots) is more fun than leaving a comment at a blog. As some of my friends don’t have a blog or a website this is the only way – apart from sending emails – to keep in touch at all.
I do have a Myspace account, but I hardly ever log in. Remember my Lee Mead obsession – lol – well, there are a lot of music/theatre fans at Myspace and my account there mainly focuses on my Lee Fanlisting, I’m sure it helped showing people the way
Bad blogger that I am, I have more than enough with those two accounts, so I’m not planning on joining yet another social network… for now.. But who knows? Never say never!
I have a myspace account, but I only log in when someone leaves me a message. I resisted Myspace for the longest time, but I had to find a way to keep in contact with all my college friends, and since they were all on….
Blogging takes enough of my time. I can’t keep up with all these other ones, too!!
Hi Karen! Yep, I’m on Facebook and I’ve added you as a friend. I have met up with several old school friends who I hadn’t seen for over 10 years, so it’s been totally worthwhile in that respect. Like one of the previous posters, I use Facebook to keep in touch with people who don’t have blogs and who are on Facebook more than they check their email!!
If you’re not careful, it can become a huge time waster. There are way too many silly applications that you can add, and the more friends you have, the more “requests” you get to add x-y-z. I have chosen the applications that I like the most and I enjoy playing around with those. I also love to play Scrabble on there!
I do have a myspace page but never go there anymore. It was mainly because my sister had one and I wanted to read her myspace blog. But there is definitely more to myspace than the blogging part. It’s much more of a “younger” site and I prefer the user-friendly set-up that Facebook offers.
There is also a site called Bebo which I belong to. Again, I never go there now because it’s similar to Facebook and I can’t keep up with more than one site!!
Oh, Twitter is SOOOOOOOO much more than ‘phone messages’. In fact, it’s not really about messaging on the phone at all (but you can get your Twitters on your SMS-enabled phone if you want). I’m the queen of social networking and by far Twitter is the best – and fastest – way to stay connected. It of course helps if your core group of friends/fans is on the platform you choose, otherwise you really have to start from scratch. Add me as a friend on Twitter and browse through my friends list & follow the conversations. You will be amazed how many people you’ll be introduced to in the new media arena.
By the way, my Twitter ID is LynetteRadio…what’s yours??!
To be honest the most social networking I do in Internet is either doing rounds in blogs, like this or a couple of Spanish forums. I might visit other english speaking forums. I see forums more active and dinamic than places like Facebook or MySpace, and even though I do belong to Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, I see both places very static and not the kind of places to chat about something. More like a place to read some elses likes about articles or websites. In facet I use Del.icio.us to archive all the articles I read in Internet that I like and I might go back or need later on.
I guess places like MySpace or Facebook might need you to know already someone there or at least have a good idea of what’s going on there.
It’s in any case interesting to know what other people think about them and how the use it, it could actually help others like me to understand the appeal of those websites.
Thanks for the article and best wishes. :O)
Thanks everyone for such fabulous comments!
I’m starting to get the feeling that the people who are most active on sites like Facebook, MySpace etc are probably not so active in the blogosphere. After all we all have only so much available time, right? I have heard that MySpace is the place where musos hang out and if you’re in the music industry you have to have a MySpace account or you’re simply not in the game.
And I tend to agree Olga, the forums on these sites are usually not very inspiring. I guess that was part of my confusion. Given that the Scrapbooking world has an abundance of forums and blogs for social interaction I guess that many of these sites don’t mean as much to us.
I do find the ones which bookmark good articles useful. And I’m very grateful to Stumbleupon as that helps me spread the word about Scraps of Mind and helps to build my readership.
The friends finding thing on Facebook is a great feature. Unfortunately it didn’t help me so I assume my old friends are not Facebookers.
Great to find a Twitterer Lynette. I don’t have an account there but if any other Scraps of Mind readers do, take note of Lynette’s ID and be sure to Twitter her (have I got the term right?)
Great post! I’ve added you to my friends list at StumbleUpon and Facebook, I’m new to both so I’m still just learning my way around but I’d love to add more friends! So if anyone wants to add me go right ahead!
Thanks Monique. I’ve ‘friended’ you too. It will be terrific if Scraps of Mind readers can connect on some of these social media sites through this post.
Hi Karen
I haven’t really jumped onto the social networking bandwagon yet; getting a Stumbleupon account was about as far as I got.
I am not at all convinced about Facebook. Maybe I should get an account, and see where it leads. I seem to hear very conflicting reports about how useful it can be to writers and bloggers.
And I just added you to my StumbleUpon list!
Yeah PreSchoolMamma I’m still working my way around Facebook. But I do have a pet dragon called Dante who lives in Venice so it can’t be all bad.
Never underestimate the power of a Stumble. I have had so much success with Stumble I love it. Facebook is way better than MySpace I avoid that one at all costs. I am starting to like Digg and Mr Wong is pretty cool too it is kind of like Shadows were you get thumbnail views of sites people submit. I also love MyBlogLog another great social networking tool/stat tool.
I’d forgotten about MyBlogLog. I’m on that too. I like the way your little avatar appears on people’s blogs when you visit them.
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