Adventures in Social Networking, 2008-10

This blog entry starts a new topic category here, which I've labeled "Adventures in Social Networking, 2008-10." Since I've (belatedly relative to many pioneers in this area) started exploring social networking tools more intensively in the past few months, I'm starting to get it -- what makes them useful and powerful, what makes them potential game-changers (or at least game-evolvers), what their limitations are.

For now (showing my relative ignorance perhaps -- but IMO to be a learner requires admitting and dealing with one's relative ignorance), I'm taking entries posted in Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere and copying them here. One of my new year's resolutions will be to figure out how to make cleaner connections between the tools while maintaining their access -- something I haven't had a chance to figure out yet.

Another New Year's resolution is to figure out when it makes sense to think through functional needs and requirements BEFORE using a tool, and when it makes sense just to jump in and start using a tool. So, for example, I'm resisting using some tools (e.g., Ning) because I don't know yet what I want to use them for. Other tools (Facebook, Twitter) I just decided to start using because someone else suggested using them, or someone showed how to use the tool in an interesting and possibly useful way.

A list of tools I've started using in the past six months or so: BaseCamp, Facebook, SmartSheet, pbwiki, Confluence, Twitter, FlipVideo, plus whatever tools are on the new MacBookPro I just got. Homo sapiens as tool user -- same as it ever was? ;-)