Facebook….MySpace….Twitter…..LinkedIn, and that is just naming a few of the many social networking sites that have become popular in the past few years. What makes one more valuable than other? Should I belong to multiple networking websites? Which one best fits my needs?

Someone who is new to the idea of social networking via the Internet, could easily be totally overwhelmed by all the possibilities out there to connect with people. Facebook right now is all that anyone ever seems to talk about…your grandma has a facebook, your aunt has facebook etc, it seems like everyone you know has a facebook. Many would say that facebook is losing its appeal, because it allows for so much complexity on an individuals page that it searching for people can be next to impossible…for young college age students who are looking to make a connection to people in the business world what is the best social networking answer?

LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers a great opportunity to connect with people that you barely know, or know well and can use them to add to your personal network. Making a LinkedIn profile that will bring in the kind of traffic that you want can be tricky. Here are some tips from “How to Change the World”

• It is very important to make connections! People with more than 20 connections are over 34 times more likely to be approached than those with less than 5.
• Do not just limit your profile to where you are currently working or going to school. It helps people to connect to you better if you put places where you used to work also.
• When you have an interview, try to find the person on LinkedIn so that you can find some common ground where you can relate to each other…it’s ok to stalk a little.

To find some more tips on using LinkedIn read the article. LinkedIn has helped many people to find jobs…so fix up your profile so that you can be one of them too!

Personally, I have never been someone who has ever really understood the point of blogging. I never feel like I have enough to say, or better yet anythingthat someone else would find interesting! So since blogging, and facebook statuses have never been something I have frequently used, I was very skeptical about twitter.

After the first glance at Twitter, I was sort of confused by the concept…why would someone want to use something like this? I did some research and came up with some reasons:

• Providing relief from the email and IM world that often wants to consume us…
• Allows people to share information that they normally would not through other forms of communication.
• You can use third party applications
• It is a way to quickly let people know something and to receive a prompt response from those that are “following” your account.

Some people love twitter and others hate it, because they feel overly connected to their friends and acquaintances. Some think it is odd to know what people are having for dinner, why they are late to work, what movie they just saw and yet others love knowing all these minute details of people’s lives.

I personally do not think that I will use twitter after tonight, but I can see why many find it useful and addicting!

Picnik is a great website for editing pictures, the main service is completely free and allows you to make numerous customizations to your pictures. It also offers a service that is 25.00 a  year for unlimited customization options. I have only been using the free options and I think that this is an awesome website. I would recommend it to anyone, it is easy to use and you can save the pictures right to your hard drive and use them in any picture program such as picasa, flickr, snapfish etc.

I always wanted to be able to edit pictures the way that picnik allows you to, without having to pay a lot of money to buy a software package. Now as long as I have a web connnection I can do it for free!

Enjoy your Picnik!

I have never used Stumbleupon before, I’ve heard alot about it, yet never used it…I have to say I was very skeptical, I have never really been into sites like this, I never wanted to have to wade through tons of “junk” that I figureed would be provided.

After using this site it appears that I was wrong, they do try to cater to the viewers interests, even though I did get a spanish site that showed up…

Some cool features of stumbleupon:

• There are add-ons for practically every popular browser
• More than 500 interests to select from in order to narrrow your results
• It is not just a website, it is also a community where users can review blogs, and look at friends and family’s rated pages.
• The goal is not to advertise to the users but to show relevant websites.

I would definitely use stumeupon again, I think that the idea behind this site is really interesting and helpful! The idea of “surfing” the web has taken on a new meaning with the introduction of Stumbleupon

Could facebook be considered a free dating service? I actually know someone who was facebooking a friend and wandered on to some guys facebook. They had similar interests and so she contacted him, they conversed for a while via facebook, then they met and started dating. I just attended their wedding in December…

Now this might be an extreme example but I am still continually surprised by how many people have “met” someone through facebook. For me this idea is totally unappealing, maybe it is because my mom drilled it into my head never to talk to strangers over the Internet when I got my first screen name. I wonder if Marc Zuckerberg knew that he was creating a free dating service when he created facebook.  Actually facebook would be a more informative dating service that others like eharmony; since some people use it as a way to document their entire lives, with pictures, videos, notes etc.

I found another blog that discuses this same idea, the writer mentions that maybe this idea of Internet dating is eliminating some aspects of dating relationships that are essential to maintaining a long-term relationship — like face to face conversations…

Who knows maybe facebook will have a dating application soon…