So what is it about sites like Facebook and Linkedin that keeps us coming back? Is it the promise of “linking” or “friending”? In the case of Facebook I have to admit to enjoying the whole comment piece of things and staying in contact with friends, ex work colleagues, and seeing pictures they decide we all need to see. For Linkedin, its more of a business tool to me so it falls out of actually being a social networking site. I’d call it a business networking resource that tries to do a bit of social ties. I actually enjoy Linkedin more on a daily basis because I’m a member of some interesting groups, like to read the give and take there, and keep track of who finds who that I may have knew.
There is a workflow to this:
- Friend A finds someone that he links to. I don’t know her but she knows someone and is linked to them that I used to know. So I invite that person and we “link”.
- Next I go find that person’s linkedin links. Voila. A person is in there I worked with at Company X that I lost track of.
- Then that person reads all my “buds” and finds a bud I have that he had and the circle closes even more.
So, the linkedin links create more bud links. Wow! The workflow brings everything back in some strange but wondrous way.
On Facebook, its more personal to me. I don’t seek out new “links” or friends and feel content to just catch up with this and that person that was at some fabled start-up or clothing company I used to be at.
So, both are useful for me but are at different ends of the spectrum. I still resist joining other sites for some reason like Plaxo even though I get lots of invites from my buds that are there too. The “plax buds” appear to then find other buds that know me so I get three tiered invites for plaxo.
I’m sorry if you have invited me on plaxo but I have no intent to radically change the social or business networking sites I manage to check on. I don’t think I can do a third social or business site at this point. I’ll be thinking of ya bud. Just not on plaxo 
