Posts Tagged “social networking”

I’m on the verge of being halfway through Tangyslice’s insane quest for social media greatness. I scraped together a few more sites that I was already signed up for and added a few here and there, and my total appears to stand at 49. I’m getting into the long tail, or in some cases, the stuff that drops out from under the long tail. It’s always hard to know what’s going to catch on, but half these sites appear to add absolutely no value. Here are twenty more social media type sites waiting for the bubble to burst.

1. friendfeed – As Tangyslice would say, YAA (Yet Another Aggregator); I would call it YANVAA (Yet Another No-Value-Added Aggregator)
2. Get Satisfaction – “People Powered Customer Service for Absolutely Everything” – watch this one, there could be something here. I like power to the people.
3. going.com – People I might run into and places I might go. Mash this up with something geocoded and mobile and maybe we’ll talk.
4. grono.net – “one of the biggest web communities in Poland” – the English version is incompletely translated so I ended up saying I was in Białystok. Go figure.
5. HelloTxt – One of several sites (see also Ping.FM and their oh-so-exclusive beta) that exist only to push your drivel into deeper crevices of the internet.
6. hi5 -Maybe wants to be facebook when it grows up, but happy to sell ads till then. *yawn*
7. identi.ca -I have to go to Canada and declare all my microdrivel under creative commons? Why?
8. istockphoto – If a stock photo site wants to become a social media site, don’t you think they should let you upload your own avatar picture and resize it for you?
9. Kiva – Another really good site that’s adding social media for no particular reason. The important connection here is between lenders and borrowers, isn’t it?
10. kwippy – Why? Why??
11. Last.FM – Maybe if it were Last.DK I would be as excited by this as Tangy is. Give me my geek-fan podcasts any day.
12. MyBlogLog – YAA. Probably YANVAA, but I can’t figure out all the bells and whistles.
13. Netvibes – OK, it’s nicer than my google hompage. But my google homepage is my google homepage.
14. newsvine – Oddly, I’ve been a member of this site for a long time. I don’t remember signing up, or why.
15. Profilactic – YAA supporting 186 sites. One Hundred and Eighty Six.
16. Socialthing! – YANVAA! But at least the little mascot critter has cute googly eyes, not a bone where its head should be.
17. soup.io – YANVAA.io
18. trig -”A community for creative people with images, blogs, music, trends, etc. Yeah, we could say all that. But what we really imagine is a place where people like their music loud, their opinions edgy and their life brave.” Keep imagining. The loud edgy people are on myspace.
19. wis.dm – The site that asks, “can you live without Starbucks?” I’m not sure but I bet I can live without wis.dm.
20. YouTube – You can tune into the limeduck channel. Don’t you feel special?

See the first 29 networks in my catalog here.

If you’ve been following Tangyslice’s desperate quest for social media coolness, you know that he’s going on a social media bender, trying to join 100 social sites in 30 days. Back in art school, I worried about the people who seemed to be more interested in cameras and lenses than in the photos they produced. Content is king, I say. If you’ve got nothing to say, you’ve got nothing to tweet, nothing to blog, nothing to shout, and ultimately, nobody to friend.  [I suppose it's possible that in social media terms you can reverse that last bit to "if you've got no friends, it doesn't matter what you have to say." See my recent attempt to explain Twitter for more mulling on that.]

That said, I took up Tangy’s gauntlet and took stock of my social media memberships, and then joined a few more to see what’s what.  After all, his misguided Spurlockian stunt comes in part from my declaration that I’ll join almost anything just to secure the limeduck name against poachers. (Yes, I flatter myself to imagine that they might exist. Allow me some self-indulgence here, it’s my blog after all.)

It turns out that I have accounts on at least 29 social media and networking sites: (and even as I type this, I realize there are a few more…)

Social networks I actually use. There is original and timely content or information here because I log in frequently and maintain information.

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

Marginal social networks. I log into these once in a while because they’re very specific or because I have a few important contacts unique to them.

• Technorati
• Plaxo
• Flickr

Insurance social networks. I maintain membership here because I believe its important to have updated information there just in case, or because I know some people search there or have contacts there.

• Spock
• Myspace
• Gather

Vertical social networks. These are very specific, maybe too specific, but I joined them to check them out and they seem to have some useful effect in keeping connected with topics of interest.

• Cork’d
• 9 Neighbors
• Foodbuzz
• Tripadvisor
• Stylefeeder

Social bookmarking sites. I just don’t use them much except occasionally to try and promote my site or a friend’s site.

• Digg
• Newsvine
• Stumbleupon
• Reddit

Repeater and aggergator sites. These are places where I have a profile that does nothing other than repeat or consolidate the RSS feed(s) from some of the sites I actually use and from limeduck.com. I’m here just in case one of these gets big and to protect the limeduck brand.

• Friendfeed
• HelloTXT
• Utterz
• Tumblr
• Pownce

OK, I admit it, I have no idea what these sites are for. I just joined them to try and stay ahead of Tangyslice.

• Plurk
• Humble Voice
• Trig
• Bebo
• Xanga
• Virb

Do I feel 29 times better?  Do I  have 29 times more to say?  Does this get me 29 times more traffic and search awareness?  Hardly.  Are there useful sites I haven’t discovered?  Almost certainly.  I’ll be disappointed if there are no comments alerting me to sites I’ve cruelly omitted.

Watch this space for updates.  Or any of the other 29 spaces.