In late 90s, I was part of starting a design community called New Element. We primarily communicated through ICQ and IRC.

My use of today’s definition of social networks started in 2002 with Friendster. Then from Friendster started joining other sites such as, myspace, Blogger, flickr, last.fm, threadless, Pownce, facebook and virb. I’m more active with photography and music related sites.

I really like what virb is doing with their site, but unfortunately I don’t have as much time as I’d like to participate. Them seem to take the good music aspect of myspace and make the design soooo much better.

On the topic of music, I came across this site recently: http://www.muxtape.com It isn’t very social in the traditional sense, but I feel like it is social in the sense that you’re still sharing music you are into with complete strangers. Being a musician and a eclectic music lover, I think you can tell a lot about a person from their music tastes.

As for what I would like to see more of in the future…definitely more music centric sites. I also feel like the lines of content management and social networks are being blurred more and more.

Been a rocky ride since. My blog is long gone. Why? I am not a writer and I will not just rehash all the other great blogs out there. Besides, I love the numbers & the analysis more. True, marketing geek, you could say.

Right now, I am enjoying the new feed reader options such as FriendFeed and Twitter. I believe these sites are teaching the ordinary person about RSS. That’s powerful to me.

Peace!

Seriously, advice for getting into social media? My advice is not to try to be anything but yourself. Do what you like to do. Talk about what you are passionate about in any and all outlets for that passion and enjoy. Any given platform (facebook, twitter, tribe, livejournal, whatever…) may or may not be the right one for you at any given moment. Don’t freak out about whether you are in the “right” place. If you are getting what you want out of it, then it’s right. If not, then not. The good news is that you don’t have to have monogamous relationships with your social media platforms. Pick and choose the things that you want out of as many applications as you see fit. So your friends aren’t in every single one of those locations? So what?!

Just chillax and enjoy it.

My interest really has spike since reconnecting with Tamar Weinberg who I knew in high school. Also was inspired by Beth Kanter and Michelle Martin early on.

I feel like I’ve just started to graze the surface and I’m always finding new interesting conversations. My advice would be not to be afraid to reach out and get in touch with people, be generous, and always remember that time is precious and you don’t own anyone else’s!

I hope this month to get more involved in conversations, use twitter more regularly, and try to develop writing every day as a habit.

My first step into social networking was my husband bugging me to sign up for Facebook (September 2007 – late in the game, I know). Finally, in March 2008, I started actually using it (rather than him checking me in every few weeks). I have reconnected with friends from high school and with some former colleagues as well.
Well, actually YEARS ago, one of my friends had me try Friendster, but I just didn’t “get” it & it lapsed very quickly.
THEN, I Googled a voice competition that I was doing and I ran across The Collaborative Piano Blog on, of all days, April Fools Day & LOVED their sense of humor and committment to the art. Through them, I found chrisbrogan.com!!! Between that inspiration, and a recent article in Classical Singer Magazine, I’ve started using MySpace (and I’ve written ONE blog post so far – more are planned) and am just staying in touch a little more. I’ve always been an avid emailer, but…. One of my colleagues used Google Calendars to invite lots of people to her recent voice recital and I thought “THAT’s COOL!!” So, I’m excited, but still VERY much a newbie. Thanks for your blog! It really encourages me that I CAN do it. I’m thinking about trying out Twitter, but don’t really know if there’s anyone that I would talk to. Does it matter if I know anyone on Twitter already, or so I just jump in??

My first step was writing a blog. I also started a second blog. I guess I remain at my “first step” level.

I did participate in the USENET before it got spammed all the way to hell. Is that social media?

Cheers
Marco