Social Networking

Today I did something embarrassing. It was the kind of thing that only an Internet neophyte does. See, I’ve been really focusing in on my blog lately and reading sites that talk a lot about good blog promotion and use of social networking and blah blah blah.

So I finally decided that I should join StumbleUpon and Digg. I’ve been a member of del.icio.us for a while (which can’t be beat for lo-fi simplicity and keeping track of sites you want to spend more time with later – that is, not at work) and Utterz. Of course, there’s a ton of other sites like these out there, too. The basic idea behind all of them is that users will identify things that they like and other users will find them. Then, as people organize themselves about shared interests or tastes, they’ll get better and better at sharing sites they like.

Fine, but I resisted because I burn enough time on-line as it is.

Well, part of the process for joining StumbleUpon.com is checking your address book to see if you have many friends who are on already. It turned out that I only had about 10 friends who were using the site and over 200 contacts that were not. I wanted to add the folks who were on there, but I didn’t really want to add the ones who weren’t.

Wouldn’t you know, like an Internet Neophyte, I hit the wrong button and sent the invite to everyone. Friends who don’t like me anymore, ex’es, co-workers, estranged former bosses and girls I couldn’t get a date with. People who don’t even remember me! Everyone!

I guess it doesn’t hurt much, but it did strike me. Of all the tech savvy people I know, only ten of them were on uber-hip StumbleUpon? How odd? Yet all these sites have thousands of users! Yet only about 5% of my contacts were on there!

I know that this will change over time, but I realized this morning that, for now, as much reach as the big social networking sites have, they all pretty much have the same reach. My guess is that if you did an analysis of the people on those sites, you’d find that they are, by and large, pretty much the same people. Like me, they’ve all just joined as many as they can handle.

Meanwhile, though, I think creative techy types, like the readers of this site, have an opportunity… NAY, A RESPONSIBILITY… to find ways to use these sites not to just promote our creative work but to hijack them and turn them into creative works. Like, by creating mazes of links that pass through multiple ones or games for our readers to play where they solve riddles through our pages or… I don’t know… on-line installations of Tagged, Stumbled and del.icio’ed sites. You decide… but I smell new space here.

Digg it!
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BradyDale