What is your opinion of social networking?
November 15th, 2008 by 
John Dilbeck
Over the last couple of years, I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into using a variety of social networking sites to enlarge my circle of friends and associates on the web. I believe that it is working out well for me and I’m enjoying keeping in touch with my online friends.
Until today, I was showing a couple of widgets from MyBlogLog.com that showed the social networking sites I’m active on and some of the latest things I’ve written on a variety of the sites I frequent.
It turns out that those widgets were interfering with the appearance of polls I create using PollDaddy.com, so I moved both of the social networking widgets to a new social networking page, here on this blog.
That solved two problems I’ve been having.
One, it speeds up page loads a bit because it reduces calls to MyBlogLog.com from every page.
Two, it makes it possible to add polls to articles I write. I don’t know how many polls I’ll be creating, but I’m going to try a few to see what we can learn.
There is an art to creating polls that get reliable results. I am not a master of that art, yet. Therefore, I’m afraid that some of my polls will be worded incorrectly and may skew the results. Since nothing really important will be affected by these polls, I’m not going to worry much about it and I’ll just add polls when there is something I’d like to learn more about from the readers of this blog and other places I’ll show the polls.
You never have to participate in the polls, but I welcome your voting and your comments.
In the following poll, I’m asking your opinion of social networking. I realize that your opinion may not match my preconceived notions, so you can select multiple choices and add your own if it isn’t already there.
To add your own answer if it doesn’t match one of the choices next to the checkboxes, just enter it in the gray text bar between the last checkbox and the View Results link. (At least, that’s what I hope it will do.)
When you’ve made your selections or added your “other” opinion, don’t forget to click on the Vote button.
I look forward to your opinions and thoughts about social networking.
Act on your dream!
JD
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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Attracting Visitors, Business Networking, Poll, Social Networking, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Look at that, I was figuring to be the first to vote, and instead I’m the third one to vote. Overall I like social networking, but have to say that some of the social networks are pretty lousy for that purpose. Facebook and LinkedIn are both pretty bad, even though they service different crowds, because neither one really stimulates conversation. Oddly enough, right now Twitter is the best of the lot mainly because people do talk to each other, even if limited by 140 characters.
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November 16th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Good morning, Mitch.
(I was busily working away yesterday, and then the power went out. It was only out for about an hour, but by then my momentum had been disrupted and I’m just now getting back to this. It was a rainy, cold, windy day, and I really appreciate the people who get out in that weather and repair the damages to our utilities. Now, back to the subject at hand…)
I agree with you about LinkedIn and Facebook when it comes to stimulating conversations.
I’ve never really gotten the hang of LinkedIn and feel like they throw up obstacles to everything I’ve ever tried to do there, so I don’t visit it much.
I love Facebook because of all the ways I can bring in things I’m doing elsewhere to my profile page. It’s not as useful for that purpose now that they’ve added tabs and some of the applications I was using - to syndicate RSS feeds, for example - are on a different tab and most people probably will never see them.
The groups on Facebook aren’t very active - at least, the groups that I care about.
Still, I really like Facebook and enjoy keeping up with some of my friends there.
Ryze has more active conversations in many groups, but, without RSS feeds, the conversations aren’t as easy to follow.
MyBlogLog has become one of my favorite social networking sites, because it makes it so easy to aggregate activity from other sources and syndicate it wherever I can add a line of javascript to a site.
TagFoot, though still in beta, offers many of the features of Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, and other established sites, and throws in some unique features of its own. So far, the conversations are rather active, but that may be because many of the current members are Squidoo lensmasters who know each other from other sources.
Thanks for your comments, Mitch.
Act on your dream!
JD
November 17th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Damn, I missed out on being No1 again. I think that those sites are good and when I get the time I do what I can there.
In regards to the poll, I never tried Polldaddy as I use a wordpress plugin instead and I’ve found it pretty good.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Good morning, Sire.
I feel like I’m getting good results from my activities on some of the social networking sites, but others just stymie me. I guess it’s always true that what works for me may not work for someone else, and vice versa.
I looked at using a WordPress plugin for polls, but I want to create several polls that I can use on multiple sites and, so far, PollDaddy.com offers pretty much exactly what I want.
Act on your dream!
JD
November 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m still trying to get mine sortsa out slowly.
I will say though that Linkedin is for the TRULY business oriented…you will be shunned immediately at the first “guess what my cat did” story. LOL (just an example)
A friend of mine recently started a coaching/consultation business and started boosting her time on LI looking for like minded people…
In a short time she has picked up NUMEROUS contacts, that have poven quite fruitful.
If anyone is remotely interested, I could ask her to come by and leave her thoughts.
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November 17th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Good afternoon, Dennis.
Sure, feel free to invite her. There’s always something we can learn.
If I were still active in computer consulting, LinkedIn may be more useful to me, but I’m not sure if it’s a good fit for someone who earns almost all of his income from affiliate marketing.
Still, it could be that I’m just missing something.
I didn’t think MyBlogLog was useful until I learned how to use it effectively.
Thanks for your comments.
Act on your dream!
JD
November 18th, 2008 at 12:05 am
I will, and thanks.
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November 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Hi and thanks for the invitation. Yes, I have recently started networking on LinkedIn and found it to be very helpful.
The key is not blatantly advertising, but spending time starting and participating in quality discussions and groups.
I just started really being active in the last few weeks and have already made great contacts of individuals asking more about my company’s services and requesting that I send them business proposals.
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December 14th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Hi, Just wanted to say hello and I am at it again creating new designs and products. I sold my first Tie this week which truly made my day.
I am enjoying seeing and meeting everyone here.
Have a beautiful and reward day.
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December 15th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Hi Elenne.
Welcome to the discussion.
So, which social networking sites do you like best for promoting yourself and your Zazzle products?
Act on your dream!
JD
December 15th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Hi Patty,
Welcome to the discussion!
I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I’ve been mostly out of the loop for the last three weeks and I’m just now trying to catch up with everything.
The last couple of years, LinkedIn didn’t feel like a good fit to me, but maybe that’s for a couple of reasons:
1. As an affiliate marketer, it didn’t feel like I was meeting the right people for what I wanted too do.
2. I didn’t take the time to really explore it and learn how to use it properly. (Doesn’t that explain a lot?)
Now that I’m getting back into consulting, I think it may be a better fit, so I’m going to try it again.
What do you like best about LinkedIn?
Act on your dream!
JD
February 28th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Thank you, that is very informative. So I am right to say that social networking is more of gathering a group of individuals with the same interests to form a community.
February 28th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Good morning, Robert.
Welcome to our discussion.
Yes, I think the primary emphasis of social networking is (or should be) a gathering of individuals who share common interests.
Business is built on relationships, especially small businesses, and I think it is worth the time to get to know like-minded people.
I also know that when I’m in the market to buy something I’m more likely to purchase from someone I already know and trust than I am to purchase from a stranger - especially online.
Act on your dream!
JD