In a nutshell, these are “social networking websites”.  They are all about relationship, about community, and connecting people together in one form or another.

For today, I’d like to share briefly about two of the more popular social networking websites – Facebook and Twitter.

If you go to facebook.com, you’ll reach a simple landing page that states, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”  The folks there at facebook obviously want to keep it short and sweet (and maybe confusing?), because you really won’t find out much more without joining up.

Once you do join up, you’ll need to start gathering and finding what facebook calls “friends”.  Chances are you already know a few people on facebook, so you can do searches for their names and/or email addresses.  You have to make a “friend request” and have it approved in order to add someone to your list, or be added to someone’s list.

When using facebook, there are a few key things to understand.

• If you post something on Facebook, don’t assume it will be private.  It won’t be!  One of the key features of facebook is “networking”, which means everyone is connected – even people you aren’t friends with.For instance, if I post a status update on my Wall, Friend A can come along and write a comment.   Now, Friend A might have a Friend B who is NOT one of my friends.  BUT, Friend B can see what Friend A wrote, because THEY are friends.  How’s that for convaluted?
• So… I repeat – don’t ever write or post anything you wouldn’t want the whole world to know about.

And then there’s Twitter.com.  Twitter has been called “micro-blogging”, because just like “regular” blogging, you can write little updates about your day, your kids, your business.

BUT, with twitter, you are limited to 140 characters (that’s letters and spaces) for each little “update” or post.  And when you post, twitter displays your updates to all your followers.  So it’s more like “one-sentence-maybe-two-live-blogging”.

I mentioned followers.  With Twitter, if you don’t have anyone “following” you, no one (but you) will ever read your tweets.  (Yes, that’s what they are called).  The quickest way to get followers is to follow others.

Here are a couple of informative (and slightly entertaining) articles about Twitter:

• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638550095558381.html
• http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-twitter/
• Twitter on Wikipedia
  

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Happy Social Networking!

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