Social Butterflies - Finding the Right Sites Pt 1

Are you confused about which social site to choose?

Social Sites are popping up all over the web and you may be wondering what they are and if you should belong to any. Perhaps you want to know where you might invest your time and your affiliations?
In researching this vast offering of online communities, I have found that it can become a bit overwhelming with the plethora of information and aspects to them. There are so many to choose from and they all seem to offer different aspects of communication, community, and environments. With this in mind, I thought we would start with two of the most visible and hot sites going right now.
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Facebook tends to be more like an online diary, journal, scrapbook or memoir depending on how you wan to use it. It offers many groups to belong to including causes that may be of interest to you. Most people will post rather than real-time or IM, however that option is available if you want to see who is online when you are. With time you can build your community by inviting people you know, and new people you want to know via a group or cause. Post comments, photos, links, music, videos, whatever it is you want to share that is important to you. Then, take your time to read your connections' posts when it's convenient for you, add comments to their posts, and send them an email directly if you choose.
It also offers groups you can join and meet others with same interest and causes as you have, or you can create a group and invite others to join yours.
You can also use FB as simply a place to post updates on your life with photos and keep it to your immediate circle of family and friends. FaceBook has a tendancy to be more intimate and more casual in its socializing.

The complete opposite of this is Twitter which is real-time, like live texting, except you are interacting with a community of thousands. And, with limit of 140 characters - you learn to tighten your thoughts and respond immediately to a current topic or start a new one yourself. This is where the fun is, because the topics jump around so much, and with the time zones, people from all over the world start to engage themselves in these open forum conversations know as Tweets. Twitter offers the opportunity to find out what other people are thinking and saying in real-time, where you can find people who have opposing or similar interests, political, religious and/or social similarities . It is not a forum for promoting your MLM or selling - people will block you and actually consider it spamming. It is building relationships and exploring subjects of interest to discuss, and yes, sometimes, you may even connect on a business level and make contacts.
If you are really wanting to spread your wings and be a social butterfly -you can join a number of different communities, keeping in mind that they all have "unwritten" rules and etiquette that you need to follow to be able to become part of it.
In my next post, we will look at several more communities and the rules of engagement.