You Learn Something New Every Day

Putting the “Net” back into the Internet

Can people form relationships without ever even meeting, talking on the phone, or even chatting with each other?

In today’s world? Yeah!

Now that the Internet is better established and has some history, it’s no longer just about information. Just like in the real world, it’s about whom you know—but how you get to know them just got more interesting.

Case in point: I left a comment on David Airey’s blog during my search for better graphics for my site. I saw that he uses LinkedIn, which I also use. I left a comment about how his site helped my blog and voiced agreement with his arguments about the social nature of the Internet, putting up a link to my LinkedIn profile.

Less than 24 hours later, I had a LinkedIn “invitation to connect” email from David. I accepted right away.

Turns out his profile has over 50 connections (as of the time of this writing—I know it’s gone way up since then) in rather interesting places. Bloggers whose names are all over the Internet (like Darren Rowse, for example), and other web designers and trendsetters in the IT and virtual technology industries. Now they are “second level connections” for me. In other words, since they know David (and David connected with me), it is easier to contact them directly, and vice versa. Lots of possibilities can open up when you get connected.

There are a bunch of other professional networking sites, like Ryze, Spoke, Doostang, Xing, Craig’s List, and of course the more social-type sites like Facebook, which can also serve as good networking tools. If you want more options, check out Wikipedia’s list of social networking sites.

One concept I think is going to catch fire is the integration of social networking tools with everyday stuff like email and getting your news. Currently, the best example of this I know out there is BlinkLife, a service that promises unlimited storage space, total freedom from spam, easy picture/video sending without attachments, and even an option to create your own public page to post what you write, kind of like a blog. You can even “create your own newspaper” of other BlinkLife users’ public announcements. I see this as groundbreaking because it takes technologies only a few of us use and makes them accessible for everyone, all in one place. If it isn’t BlinkLife, some other application that mashes together all these functions will rule the day. I bet Google is working on this right now.

I am in the process of putting together a page full of place to find useful networking applications. When it’s up, I’ll be sure to post the link here!

June 25th, 2007 Posted by Michaell at 12:00am | Networking, The Web | one comment

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