The Idea Blog

An article in BusinessWeek (Aug 20&27) about Facebook forced me to take inventory of the various social and business networking sites I’ve joined.

There’s LinkedIn, a site built around “connections.” Presumably one meets new prospects and/or clients here, and it feels kind of like a “six degrees of separation” (the movie and the concept) or kevin bacon sort of thing. (Here’s my profile there.)

There’s Ziggs, a site that claims to help you take control of your online identity, giving your profile some precedence over some of the other stuff that may appear about or by you online. (Here’s my Ziggs profile.)

Believe it or not, I’m actually a Facebook member. I had deactivated my profile there, but then reactivated it yesterday to try to learn more about how it’s changing to offer more for those of us way, way past college years.

There are all types of specialty communities, including the Ning site, which allows one to set up his own private network for special interest groups. I assisted our client Dunes Properties in setting up its own internal network called DunesNet.

And who could forget MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s online conquest and the darling of many indie music lovers? I lost interest in this pretty quickly, but here’s my profile page.

I’m sure I’m leaving out one or two, but you get the idea. I’m far from a serial connector, but I believe networking offers tremendous potential, though I’m not quite sure how (yet). One thing I’ve noticed, however: if you get into one of these things and really work it, you can meet a lot of people and people can get to know you. The DunesNet has introduced people to each other inside that 50+ employee company, people who didn’t really know each other at all. They see photos, put faces with names and learn of each others’ interests. (”You went to North Carolina. I am a Tar Heel too.”)

Are you a network member? Which one(s)? What good things does it do for you?