SocialNetworking.com

Sorry that i haven’t around much lately. I am a Wordpress guru and web developer first, so it’s been a crazy time. During the slower holiday season, I will be updating this blog especially in the area of our SocialNetworking.com project.

But enough of that.

Today I pass along a tip that has helped me get new followers and establish new relationships on Twitter. I’m not one of those “get as many followers as you can to make yourself look good” folks. It’s simple:

1. Follow people you consider worthy, that are interesting. (This should be a rule regardless).
2. Create or open a FriendFeed account. Try to make some posts (the FriendFeed browser snippet is a great tool). Also join rooms that interest you. These rooms should intersect with the interests of those who you are following in Twitter.
3. Whenever someone shares a link (especially if it’s to their blog or own website), add it to FriendFeed in the right place. For example, if someone shares a link about Wordpress 2.7 (Top Five Reasons Why You Should Upgrade) to their blog – repost that on Friendfeed’s Wordpress Room. You might want to make sure he/she hasn’t done the same thing already.
4. Send a twitter message to the person saying you thought the link was interesting and you posted it in FriendFeed. Provide the DIRECT Friendfeed link.

That’s it. Don’t overdo this, but if you are sincere and smart most will respond positively. They might thank you or even start following you. You have done them a service and they might think they are like Scoble for a second.

Will this work with the A-list twitters? Probably not – their links get shared all the time. But the point is to intelligently build your twitter social network and be a contributer. And doing this with Friendfeed is one good way of doing that.

Jeremiah Owyang wrote an excellant article this morning entitled “Five Ways Web Professionals Should Be Proactive In a Recession“. It’s an excellant read, and i’m not going to steal away pageviews from Jeremiah from revealing all his points. But he did have two that I thought applied to what we are working on at SocialNetworking.com:

1. Use Online Networking Tools to Connect

2. Attend Real World Events

Both of these items directly involve networking - both online and off - in order to keep your noticed, befriended, and in “the loop” (my words). This is not anything new - even during the “good items” before last year the more people you knew, the better off you were. These days, you cannot thrive by yourself. Actually you might want to change that world to “survive”.

For those of us with hundreds/thousands of followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Friendfeed - that might be something we take for granted. Most of us probably have been on a while (or probably in rare cases are a celebrity or something similar). But what about those JUST getting into the social networking game? As a website developer and wordpress nut (NOT a self-labeled “social media expert”) i’m encountering these types more and more - ad agencies, marketing companies, and even small time web development guys are wanting to jump into social networking and fast. The problem isn’t that they don’t recognize the importance of social networking - the problem is that they don’t have the time to find and follow the right people to build a strong network.  How does someone in the clothing industry quickly find and build a quality network, for example? 

In this economy, as mentioned by Jeremiah, it’s vital now more than ever to get more contacts. Quality contacts, not mindless followers. We as experts (or at least experienced enough in online social networking) ask ourselves daily how we can show the value/worth of social media and social networking to those new to the game. The next step here, the question that we are working over here and the question i present to everyone, is how do you help them to build an efficient social network as fast as possible? One that can potentially be part of the vital in the times we now find ourselves in.

BTW, if you aren’t following Jeremiah - and it doesn’t matter what industry you are in - if you are serious about social networking and media, follow him.

I’m happy to become the manager and developer currently for SocialNetworking.com - a great new project which I hope becomes worthy of the domain name (just imagine if Friendfeed could have had this domain name - but I couldn’t imagine Friendfeed as anything but Friendfeed). 

Can’t say much about the project right now - for several reasons. One, obviouslly we want to keep things under wrap while development is under way. We are planning on making the development of the site more “open source” and get the feedback and work from others (especially the social media elite) involved. The concept as it stands right now was born several months ago, and it will evolve over the next few months. What I can say is that it will not be another Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.  There are enough social networks out there. It is also not a commerical project or startup. In fact, we want to share the site and get feedback.

This blog will primary be documenting the concepts, ideas, and work behind the project - before and after it’s made live.

While project development is ongoing, this blog will also highlight interesting and thought provoking topics involving social media, social tools, and development APIs and client tools. I myself am a coder (if you ever doubt you can check my link blog at davidbisset.com, which is primarily for web developers/coders and designers) and feel it’s important to document new tools and ideas as well as the “big picture” concepts.

With a fresh install of Wordpress 2.7 and a few plugins, this here begins the blog of SocialNetworking.com.