These days, I regularly check my social network at Facebook and suddenly realize I have 632 friends. Some around town mock me for the large number and I have to pause and figure out how it grew so large.For the most part, they fall into clusters so there are the friends/neighbors and political colleagues in Fairfield, my professional contacts, my convention pals, folks related to our time at Yale-New Haven Hospital, old high school and college friends, friends of Robbie’s, and family. Then there are the large number of friends of friends who seem to think connecting with me is worthy of their time.Since Facebook offers me a relatively easy way to keep tabs on my collective worlds, I check in at least once a day, add a comment or post a status report. Initially, I joined for self-promotional but really see this as more social.It certainly allows me to offer timely birthday wishes which is a plus—I certainly appreciated all the notes back in the summer. I’d like to Super Poke and take silly quizzes regularly but there always seems to be something else to do. It’s another reason why I avoid most group and cause invitations. Nothing personal if I do not choose to join you.On the other hand, LinkedIn is definitely for business connections and I’m far choosier over who I link with or who I extend introductions to. This is stuff I take seriously and given the coming light work days, will be using it more than I have in the past year.Beyond, that, while I have signed up for Twitter, find I haven’t gotten into the habit and aren’t certain if it’ll be worth the effort. Any thoughts?I do Plaxo seems it seems harmless but have given up on all the others such as Reunion, Hi5, BeBop, etc. There are only so many times it makes sense to connect again and again with the same people while each site offers relatively little to be unique enough for the time and effort.
I don’t really go on social networking sites a lot, since my company blocks access to most. I like Facebook the best of all the ones for which I signed up, but the only one I can get at work is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is pretty good for business-oriented stuff; Facebook is definitely better for just playing around.
There’s the casual social networking that’s nice about Facebook, but it’s really been an invaluable tool for me to keep in contact with filmmakers and film festival folks all over the world who feed me info, tips, etc. for my film site.I also have a Twitter account, but I don’t use it in the regular social updating way it’s designed for. I use it as a “link dump” where I just post links to film articles and news I find. Sometimes if I’m looking for an idea to write about something, I scan through the links I threw up on Twitter to come up with article ideas.