There is no doubt that social networking is an improvement in the way we communicate on the internet, as it allows for people to connect in ways not possible prior to it. For example, Facebook allows to search people by name; this is much easier compared to connect with old friends, family members, acquaintances, coworkers and so on.

However, social networking is not a new thing anymore and does have tenure. And of course, any social networking site will claim that they sign up new users left and right on a daily basis and have millions of users.

But how many of those millions of users actually bother using social networking is the question. How many are "bouncers", whereas they signed up then never did anything with their social network stuff afterward?

Even though the numbers are rising as far as social networking usage is concerned, its definitely not the hot topic of conversation anymore. Has the popularity of social networking peaked? I believe it has. And there’s only one direction something can go after it peaks.

I don’t want to indicate that this style of communication is a fad that will go away, because it won’t. This is something that I believe will remain on the internet for a good long time. But it’s obvious there are more than a few that have become, said politely, disenchanted with the way it works.

How social networking works is its biggest downfall. Facebook for example has things in it that crash constantly. Even when you attempt to do something as simple as send a message to somebody else, you may get a server error. Twitter has had the same problem ever since it started. MySpace also has its bugs. None of them have ever been able to operate with 100% efficiency.

On top of that, these sites changes their interfaces continually. What you clicked on one day to get somewhere may get moved next week. And then moved again next month. It’s irritating to deal with.

The final blow that gets people disenchanted with social networking is that it can be nothing but a big ball of boring. Like it or not, all social sites act the exact same way, with the only differences being in what applications are available to you. But then there are those who don’t bother with apps, so what you do on Facebook is more or less the exact same thing you did on MySpace. Eventually it becomes tiresome and you just quit using it.

In the end, what you have is a medium where you add a bunch of people on a contact list, trade messages, photos and funny cat videos.

There should be no wonder as to why some people bounce from this. Some call it like it is: "Isn’t a social networking site just a big forum with some extra added crap in it nobody uses?"

Mainly, yes. People recognize this and move on to other things.

What do you think?

Has social networking passed its peak of popularity? Have you become disenchanted with it? Let people know by posting a comment.

A problem with instant messaging is that it can be tough to get the same screen name on all services you use. Most people these days choose to employ the use of a multi-protocol instant messaging program such as Digsby, Trillian, Miranda, Adium or Pidgin, and having all those different names can be aggravating for others to remember. You can, however, use your email address as your screen name for just about every single IM service there is.

Before telling you how this is done per each service, there are a few things to bear in mind.

The email address you choose as your screen name must be one that you own and use regularly. In other words, don’t use your work email address.

Don’t use an email address that is "tied" to your ISP, because at some point in the future you may change ISPs.

Try to use an address that doesn’t have any dots, dashes or underscores in it. If you can’t do that, that’s understandable, but be aware that some IM services won’t permit usernames that contain characters like that.

How to register your email address as your screen name in..

MSN/Windows Live

1. Go to www.live.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click the Sign up button on the left.
4. The first field will be Use your e-mail address. Proceed from there.

AIM

1. Go to www.aim.com.
2. Click Get a screen name at top right.
3. Choose Use an existing email address as a Screen Name. Proceed from there.

Google Talk

This one takes a few hoops to jump thru to get this working, but can be done.

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. Click the Sign in link at top right.
3. Click Create an account now at bottom right.
4. Use your current email address as your screen name on the next page and continue sign-up.

The hoops you have to jump thru at this point are that after you’ve created your Google account, you will need to also create a Gmail account in order to use the Google Talk service. Once you’ve finished signing up, go to www.google.com/accounts and add in the Gmail service. Yes, you will have to create an Gmail account "on top of" your Google account, but both will be "tied" together afterward. Then people can start sending you instant messages via your Google Talk account.

Yahoo!

This IM service doesn’t allow the creation of accounts using your email address, however, being that MSN/Live accounts and Yahoo! accounts can interact with each other easily, all anybody has to do is send you messages to your MSN/Live account via the Yahoo! service and you will receive them, so the creation of an additional Yahoo! screen name isn’t necessary.

Advantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It’s guaranteed to be available.

In order to use an email address as a screen name, it must be validated on sign-up by sending a confirmation email to that address. What this means is that the only person who could use your email address as a screen name is you, so it’s guaranteed to be available.

2. It eliminates a lot of confusion.

One screen name for all your IM services you use is mighty convenient. It’s also easy not only for you but for the people you chat with.

3. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Your email address is your screen name, so those you chat with don’t even have to remember what your email address is, because it’s already in their contact/buddy list.

Disadvantages of using your email address as your screen name

1. It makes it easy for people to know what your email address is.

Yes, this is listed as an advantage but it can serve to be a disadvantage, because maybe there’s certain folks you don’t want knowing your email address.

2. Slight possibility of confusion.

If your screen name is you@hotmail.com, and a contact wants to communicate with you over AIM, you may have to convince them, "Yes, that is my screen name. Seriously. It does work. It’s not just MSN/Live." People aren’t used to seeing a screen name as an email address.

3. You will have to tell everybody to switch over to your new IM screen name(s).

There’s no way around this unfortunately. However when you do get everybody to know your new screen names, it’s well worth it.

Why bother doing this at all?

Ultimately it’s the most convenient way to handle your email and IM communications. Everything is centralized around one screen name. The best part is that you don’t have to radically shift around anything. You can still use the same email and the same IM clients you’ve always used. The only thing changing here is your screen name and nothing else.

And as stated above, nobody on your buddy/contact list has to hunt for your email address. They know what it is right up front.

In fact, if you used this in concert with your social networking profiles (which all have the ability to find contacts by email address,) this even furthers the convenient use of your email address as your one screen name.

Who would have guessed that the email address was the best screen name all along?

This is a response article to Jessica E. Vascellaro’s article, Why Email No Longer Rules.

For years I have been hearing over and over, "Email is dead." This is absolutely not true and probably never will be. The reason is because there has been absolutely nothing introduced to messaging which works better than email.

Jessica cites Twitter and Facebook several times. Both of these are cloud-based, and are therefore stupid because there is no way to save your messages locally and back them up. And when the cloud goes down, guess what? So does all your messaging. Nobody in their right mind would use Twitter, Facebook or any other cloud-base as their primary messaging system. Do so and you’d be a fool.

She did not mention anything about the cloud whatsoever (it’s mention nowhere in her article,) or how unbelievably dangerous it is to use. I think the debacle with T-Mobile Sidekick exemplifies in grand fashion why cloud-based messaging just plain sucks.

There is absolutely no way business can run without email. It is a messaging system that is proven to work. Twitter is plagued with outages. Facebook is plagued with social media "badness" in the form of phishing. Business has enough issues dealing with spam, and you want to tack on cloud outages and phishing on top of that?

I can say with utmost certainty that social media style messaging absolutely will not replace email, nor "dethrone" it, as it were.

Something eventually will replace email, but it certainly won’t be Facebook or Twitter. Not by a long shot. Email is still king of the mountain.

When most people think of freely available email on the internet, three names comes to mind: Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail. While it’s true there are plenty of other free mail providers out there, it’s the "Big Three" that people use most.

However there’s a fourth that has been making some good waves, that being GMX.

Ordinarily the case is that whenever a web site other than the Big Three provide email, it’s not very feature-rich and is tacked on as an afterthought.

GMX on the other hand offers email that has some real forward thinking in it just like the other Big Three do.

The latest free offering within the GMX mail interface is the ability to connect directly to Facebook from your mail. Not only can you post status updates but also see your Facebook "wall" directly within GMX.

In addition to that, you can login directly to GMX mail using your Facebook account. This is very convenient because it means you can use one login to do two things at once:

(the top-right portion of the GMX.com web site)

If you are already logged into Facebook, going to GMX will auto-login to your GMX mail.

For existing GMX mail users, don’t worry you do not have to sign up a new GMX account. You can continue to use the same one you have all along.

Hotmail not so hot for you anymore?

Yahoo! Mail a bit too bloated?

Gmail screw-ups ruining your day?

Consider GMX. It’s got features that are actually useful and now has easy Facebook connectivity included.

For many, there will come a time when you’re "connected" to too much stuff on the internet. You know you’re too connected when you simply can’t keep up with everything you’re signed up for. Whether it’s email subscriptions, RSS feeds, YouTube channels, MySpace/Facebook friends, AIM buddies and so on, all this information being blasted at you can be too much to handle.

If this sounds like you, maybe it’s time you do what I call The Purge.

There’s the basic purge and the extreme version. We’ll start with the extreme version.

Extreme Purge

1. Make a list of all the stuff you’re currently subscribed to. And I mean all of it. For some it make take time to get this list completed. To make it easier to get your list together, use a password manager like KeePass.

2. Go on an account canceling rampage and do it in such a way where you absolutely cannot get the accounts back. At the end of it all you should only have your primary email and a few instant messenger accounts left – but no more.

3. Commence freaking out for at least 1 to 2 days because you canceled so much stuff.

4. Accept what you did and know your life is better off for it.

Basic Purge

Similar to the Extreme Purge except you don’t actually delete accounts. Instead you remove any public presence the account has and discontinue all notifications, be they in-system or email.

Example using Facebook:

First, login to your Facebook account, go to Settings then Notifications, then tick every single option to Off. For some this will take a lot of clicking but it’s worth it.

Second, adjust your profile and privacy settings so you are not indexed whatsoever.

And that’s it.

Most of you out there will opt for the Basic Purge because it’s not so nerve-wracking.

Indicators that you need to purge

Information overload

This is mentioned above. You have so much info coming at you that you cannot make heads or tails of it anymore. Moreover you’re getting interrupted from receiving the information that’s truly important in your life.

More than 50% of the info blasted your way is worthless or doesn’t entertain anymore

The email notices from your bank are important. The services you pay for that send you notifications are important.

The "joke of the day" daily email isn’t. The incessant blabbering from friends in the form of bulletins isn’t. The YouTube comment notifications aren’t.

You get the idea. Stick to stuff that’s important to you and cut the fluff out.

You receive system notices from web sites you don’t even use anymore

You signed up for a bunch over the past few years and you’re still receiving updates from them – even though you haven’t so much as logged in to those sites in the last six months. Time to cut ‘em out.

What you’re signed up for is literally wasting time and money

Got a "pro" Flickr account but don’t upload photos anymore? Cancel it.

Do you pay for web hosting but do nothing with your web site, nor do you receive any significant traffic? Cancel it and use a freebie WordPress blog instead (or a freebie Blogger or Spaces or LiveJournal or whatever else you want to use).

Efforts to be more internet social only turned out to fill your email inbox full of crap

Social networking is one of those things that takes a fair amount of effort just to make it work for you. But if from your social networking stuff you’re just sitting on the sidelines watching other people use the system while you say, "Why do I even have this?", it’s time to get rid of it. That or at least turn off the notifications because it’s not doing you any good.

Consider doing The Purge as defragging your internet life, so to speak. Sometimes it just needs to be done.

Have you ever purged?

Did you ever reach a point where you said, F&@K IT, I’M DELETING EVERYTHING, and actually did it?

Or are you close to that point?

Let us know in the comments.

Most of you have probably heard the term ‘domain squatter’ which is someone who registers a domain with the sole intent of selling to someone else who has a legitimate need for it (at a substantially increased price). Well, domain names are not the only thing being targeted by squatters as social networking names are being quickly gobbled up.

This day and age, anything which has the perception of being valuable online is going to be sucked up quickly, so you have to act fast. Even if you do not currently make use of the popular social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) but see yourself doing so in the future you should go ahead and register the name you want… now.

At right is a screen shot of the Wikipedia page List of social networking websites.

Said honestly I had absolutely no idea there were this many. Yeah, I knew there were quite a few but not so much that you had to press "Page Down" five times to read thru it…

…when reading the web page on a 1680×1050 monitor…

…with the browser maximized.

Sure, you’ve heard of MySpace and Facebook – who hasn’t?

But how about lifeknot?

Or Ryze?

Or wis.dm?

Never heard of any of these? Neither did I until I looked at the list.

And yes, it’s sad the only way I was made aware of these other sites is by examining a generic list of social networking sites.

What’s even crazier is that the list isn’t even complete and never will be as their are other "networks" starting up all the time.

Social networking has reached the point where I call it a "wash". The sites who were first in the game will always be the most popular and most used and anyone else who joins in will never achieve that level of success – and that’s just the way it is.

~ ~ ~

Some related reading: Although this article is a bit old now, I suggest reading The world map of social networks.

It is very interesting how some of these networks turned out to be very country-specific and more or less stayed that way.

Talking about using social media for business purposes practically walks on the third rail of the Internet. A lot of people who are using social media sites like Twitter or Facebook are particularly sensitive when it appears they are being marketed to.

In my opinion, the fact that Twitter users get nervous when they see a “internet marketer” use Twitter is testament to the fact that many use it incorrectly. Twitter and any other social media platform is inherently a community. And that community is made up of real people.

And just like when people get annoyed when you walk up and knock on the door to sell you something during dinner time, people are going to resent you if you start marketing to them in their social settings online.

This is not to say that, as a business person, that you should steer clear of using such sites. Absolutely not. These sites are used by a LOT of people. And with a large group of people, it is inevitable that some of your potential clientele are using these social media sites.

The trick (if you want to call it that) is to treat people with respect. You need to actually participate as a person first, and a business second. You need to be a part of the community. Offer things of value. You might even just “shoot the crap” with people about things which have absolutely nothing to do with your business. If you build a reputation on these sites as a PERSON and not as a business, then when you send in the random plug every now and then for your business, people won’t really mind it.

These sites are called social media, and you need to place emphasis on the SOCIAL part of it.

If you find the social part of these sites to be a waste of your time, then do yourself a favor and don’t even start using these sites to begin with. You will do your business more harm than good by joining a site like Twitter for the purposes of building up a big follow list and then spamming them with your links.

It took me a while before I grasped the whole concept of what social networking actually is. It’s not that I don’t understand how it works technically. It’s that I didn’t comprehend what it’s about. Said sincerely, it can get confusing.

First, let’s try to define it. We’ll use Google. Google’s best definition is:

…a phenomena defined by linking people to each other in some way.

Now if you take all the other definitions listed on the above linked page, all of them point back to that definition. It is a phenomena that links people together. As dry and non-descrip as that sounds, that’s what it is.

You might be asking yourself “So… social networking doesn’t necessarily mean to connect to people by means of the internet?” RIGHT. It means using any means to link to other human beings, electronic or otherwise.

But we’ll stave from that definition and stick to social networking by means of internet.

If one were to define internet social networking literally, it is any web site that allows you to create a public “shareable” identity and communicate with other human beings.

Do forums count as social networking?

If the forum is public, yes. The profile you create is your public identity which can be linked. The system allows you to post and reply to messages (that’s the communication part). Your profile can be updated whenever you want. So yes, forums can be considered social networking. Does this mean the PCMech forums could be considered a social networking site? Yes.

Mystery solved as to why forums will not die: Forums will not die and never will as long as the internet exists because they do an extremely effective job as a social communications medium.

Do blogs count as social networking?

No (or mostly no). Even though you can post commentary, you have limited profile creation abilities, and that profile cannot ordinarily be shared/linked.

Do microblogs counts as social networking?

Absolutely. Twitter is a good example. It’s a microblogging service that is tied to a public shareable profile and allows for easy access to connect with other humans.

Where does MySpace, Facebook and like sites fit into all this? Didn’t they start this whole social networking thing?

What makes MySpace, Facebook and sites of that ilk carry the banner as social networking web sites is the fact they allow the ability to create public editable shareable profile pages. That is your identity and can be shared with anyone. In addition, the ability to add “buddies” or “friends” is what makes it social by allowing you to connect to other humans.

Once you understand that social networking is people-powered, you “get it”.

It is at times difficult for people to understand that an internet social network absolutely does not work unless humans are there to keep it going. And I’m not talking about the administrators of whatever site it is. Rather, I’m talking about the users (like you).

When you grasp the concept of “Oh.. so the deal is to connect with people, share like interests and be… social?”

Yes. Now you understand it.

I’m not telling you to run out and get Twitter, MySpace and Facebook accounts. What I am saying is that if you decide to use it, you do actually have to put forth actual effort to receive the social benefits of participating. If you’re a lurker, social networking is not for you. But if you’re looking to expand your social circle, then yes – go for it.

One of the “in” things to do online these days is lifestreaming. Lifestreaming is where you have an online record of your daily activities. You might use Twitter to share random thoughts throughout the day. You might snap photos or take videos and put them online. You’ll write blog posts. You’ll update your statuses in social networks like Facebook.

In a way, I do this. I blog regularly both here at PCMech and on DavidRisley.com. I am a regular user of Twitter and have been known to send in “tweets” even while using my cell phone when I am not in the office. I use FriendFeed and love the site because it aggregates all of these various activities into a single feed. Continued

BusinessWeek dared (gasp) to throw out a Web 1.0 term, portal. The Web 2.0 term is called social network.

Before continuing, I’ll attempt to explain the difference between portal and social network.

A portal is an entryway. It is the place where you begin when using the internet. For example, many people use Yahoo as a portal. It is set as your home page, your e-mail and so on.

A social network is a human connector. It is the place you go to find and connect with other people. You are literally socially networking with other humans.

Portals and social networks at present don’t exactly play nice with each other. And by “play nice” I mean that they don’t interconnect with each other. Nowhere does Yahoo connect with MySpace or Google with Facebook and vice versa. Each one of those entities is distinctively separate.

Continued

It is rare that I see a parody that so accurately NAILS how stupid social networking can be. Watch for the Friendster reference and the MySpace “skank power.” That’s all I gotta say.

I am a professional blogger. This means I am pretty tuned into the Internet and what’s happening. Social media and the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon are second nature to me. It is the same for other bloggers. But, those of us who are familiar with all this stuff make up a small percentage of the Internet. In fact, most of my readers here on PCMech (yes, that means YOU) are probably not very in tune with social media. Continued