Hey there! Yeah, I’ve been gone for a while…a long while. I think I killed all my traffic which means that if you’re reading this you’re either one of my good friends or you subscribed a while ago and forgot about it 
(or both).
It’s ok. I don’t do this for the traffic. I do it for the fun of it…and for those that like what they see. Like my Top 7 Twitter Commands Everyone Should Know post. It was written a long time ago but a lot of people have either commented on the blog post or replied to me via Twitter that it helped them. That totally makes my day.
Anyway, if you’re back–Welcome back! If you’re here for the first time…Hello and Welcome.
The topic of this post is to kind of explain some of the social networks out there. What they do, how they’re most commonly used and hopefully, shed a small amount of light in case you’re curious.
Take the headline for a second.
I Took a Buzz Off Tumblr, Threw My Twitter Feed All Over My Facebook and Plurked My Posterous - So Tweet Me.
A few years ago that would have been complete gibberish (as opposed to partial gibberish today). We are still in the beginning to middle phases of the Social Media boom. So for those that haven’t had the opportunity to check them out or if you’ve seen these words and aren’t sure what they even are, here ya go:
If you don’t know what Facebook is, then I’m amazed that you’re even reading this at all. Or, it’s 1,000 years in the future, the Earth has been destroyed and you’re an alien looking through the rubble to get a glimpse at what life was like and stumbled across this digital nugget by mistake.
Explaining Facebook is out of the scope of this post, but I noted it here because it’s in the headline and frankly, I just wanted to write that funny paragraph above.
Twitter is a microblogging service that allows it’s users to post messages in 140 characters or less. It is a hugely popular service and one that I’ve written about several times. Twitter lets you choose which people you “follow” or see messages from (called tweets). In turn, people can “follow” you and see your tweets in their Twitter feed.
There is a common misconception that Twitter is just full of messages about what people had for lunch and what their pet’s just did. Granted, there’s a lot of that. With almost 50 million tweet’s a day, they’re not all…or even mostly…going to be gold. From thought leaders sharing their secrets to everyday people breaking big news stories, to businesses using it as a customer service and public relations tool, Twitter is much more revelant than what tv show person X is watching right now.
Buzz
Google’s Buzz is the latest service to dip it’s toe in the social media waters. At first, Google Buzz was thought of as Google’s version of Facebook or Twitter. While Buzz’s stake isn’t clearly cut out just yet, it seems that taking over Facebook and Twitter isn’t part of the plan. Google Buzz is more for conversations between groups of people.
While Twitter does have conversations, they’re typically limited to just a couple messages. Facebook has conversations of course, but Facebook is much, much more than that.
With Buzz, you’re not limited to 140 characters and if you use any of Google’s other services you’re not required to log into anything special. You can see conversations from people you “follow” (much like Twitter except that Google follows the people in your address book automatically) and have lengthy conversations in a threaded view. Google Buzz is much more like a message board in that respect.
Posterous
Posterous is a blogging service that takes pride on it’s ease of use. Like a typical blog, you can post anything from text to photos to video. You can post from the website, from email or from your mobile device. Post as little or as much as you like. Posterous can also send your content to many of the other social media services out there. This way, instead of having photos one place, video’s another, files someplace else and posts in yet a different place…you can have them all on Posterous, aggregate them out and direct everyone to a central location.
Tumblr
Tumblr is much like Posterous and has been around a bit longer. You can also post text, photos, links, music and video’s using Tumblr. While Tumblr has the ability to customize pretty much everything, it has the look and feel of a more traditional blog without the hassles of finding a host and setting up software.
Plurk
Plurk is a service that on the surface seems a lot like Twitter. You post short messages to your stream and you can follow people and people can follow you. Plurk takes a few different angles with the microblogging space though. First with it’s “actions”. When posting, you have the options of choosing one of many actions like “is”, “says”, “thinks”, “feels”, “wonders” and many more. Plurk also introduces the concept of “karma” on microblogging. The more you interact with the service, the higher your karma goes. This makes it pretty fun (and challenging) to “keep your karma up.”
While Plurk is a microblogging service, it has more of a chat room feel than Twitter. It’s not a true chat room of course, but the speed and flow of the messages makes it feel more intimate than a pubic forum.
So hopefully, if you’re new to the area’s of social media, this post will help a bit in showing you what’s out there. Keep in mind, this is just a very small list of what is out there for you to explore. There are ton’s of other social media sites out there to explore and enjoy (they just didn’t fit into my catchy headline ).
If you have a favorite social media site, feel free to list it in the comments below.
