Social Media for Fun and Profit

Obviously if you are reading this blog, then you have dipped your toe into social media. Whether you use social media to entertain yourself, keep up with friends, or to make a bit of cash on the side (via AdSense or affiliates on your blog), it's nearly impossible these days to avoid it. Here's my two cents on your social media options:

• Blogs. I happen to like blogs because they are free, simple to set up, allow you to easily add revenue-generating ads to your site, and with a bit of HTML-tweeking, you can modify them to your heart's content. It is important, however, to keep your blog content fresh which means posting often. If you want to set up your own blog, go to http://www.blogger.com/.


• Twitter. I use Twitter occasionally to send out quick updates. Other friends use Twitter to broadcast their every though and movement which is a bit much in my opinion, but, to each his own. I decided I liked Twitter more when I read this article.


• FaceBook. Hate it. Just my opinion however as there are approximately 400 MILLION FaceBook users who disagree with me. Although FaceBook provides a good opportunity for marketing and finding old friends, I am opposed to a program that vacuums up all of the contacts in my email address book then spams them until they join FaceBook. Plus the people I know who use FaceBook appear to be addicted to it whether they are playing FarmVille or updating their wall CONTINUOUSLY through meetings which is a huge pet peeve of mine.


• Tumblr. I like this platform which is kind of a hybrid between short Twitter "tweets" and longer blog posts. It's easy to update on the run but doesn't have the heavy social network emphasis that platforms such as FaceBook have.


• FourSquare. Maybe it's because I am old or maybe it's because I am a bit paranoid, but I don't see the value in broadcasting your every move including exactly where you are at and exactly what businesses you frequent. Creepy.


• News. I've been too busy lately to feed my news addiction but when I want to know what is going on in the world, I go to a couple of news aggregators which basically list everything newsworthy that is going on. PopUrls is a great site that captures both social network news an regular news. AllTop lets me catch up on the top links in specific categories.
• Speaking of AllTop, they have a "social media" news aggregator page here.


• YouTube can be entertaining. Although I have never posted a video to the site, there's plenty on the site to keep you busy watching no matter what your topic of interest.


• I never knew there were so many social networking sites until I checked out this comprehensive list.

Whether you use social media for business, keeping up with friends and family, or pulling together your survival network, taking advantage of these useful, and often free, services is a great way to keep in touch with others.