Social Networking Tools and Tips
Two of the most common tasks that are performed during the early days of the Internet include the searching of all kinds of information using search engines and the checking of e-mail. Now with the newly emerged advancements in web, developing social networking sites formed and several of them have reached high rankings in terms of global site visits.
Facebook is currently the leading social networking site with over a 130 million unique visitors. These were statistics back in 2008 so the numbers should be a lot greater. It incorporated the core features found in earlier sites like MySpace and Friendster, including the ability to create profile pages, add people as “Friends”, see what common friends connected people have with each other, and post public messages on other profile pages.
Facebook’s massive success convinced the developers to create a system where networked people can chat with each other in real time without the need of software. Third-party developers built on this concept anyway by implementing “Facebook Chat” support on their multiprotocol instant messaging applications. There are several free applications that you can get like Digsby, Trillian, and Pidgin if you want to enjoy chatting with your contacts in various networks using a single interface.
Twitter is another website that grew quickly, even attracting many celebrities, too. Although the number of unique visits isn’t anywhere close to Facebook, Twitter excels in simplicity where messages of up to 140 characters can be posted for the public to see. This is known as microblogging and the social networking features of the site make sure that these posts are read. People can “follow” other profiles so any updates can be seen on their main page.
It can be tricky to see all of the content in Twitter if you have lots of followers so several applications were developed so people can “Tweet” or see other people’s “Tweets” with ease. Tweetdeck is one popular example of a downloadable client that can be used to do all sorts of things the web interface offers. There are also some services that add extra functionality to twitter like Twitpic.
Facebook is so popular that other social networking sites that previously had the crown including MySpace and Friendster have a hard time keeping up. However, there are some networks like LinkedIn that are still successful because the approach is different. LinkedIn has similar features to Facebook, but only encourage business users to register so that partners among members can be formed.
Some applications integrate multiple social networking services like Flock which is a browser based on Firefox that allows easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and other services from a sidebar. There are also a number of widgets that can be used to retrieve information from a social networking profile so that it displays on the site.
Social networking sites aren’t only used to make new friends and keep in touch with existing ones. These sites offer new and exciting ways to share all kinds of information and multimedia content. Even Internet marketers are riding on these sites to spread their offerings to their target market. Just make sure that the information you put on your profile is accurate so others can find you. If you have privacy concerns, read the site’s privacy policy and adjust any privacy related settings so you can be more secure.
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