What is Social Networking?

Online social networking involves connecting and sharing information with other like-minded people via the Web. Internet message boards and Yahoo Groups fall under the general category of social networking, as do social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us and Technorati, applications that let users add their own keywords (or tags) to Web pages and blogs.

On the other hand, friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) social networking sites such as MySpace, and Friendster are specifically designed to connect individuals and groups directly with others who share common interests and goals.

A typical FOAF network will display a directory of people or topics. When you find someone with similar interests, you can send them a message asking to be added to their contact lists. This in turn allows you to meet other like-minded folks in that person’s network, theoretically expanding your organization’s contacts more efficiently and quickly than you could in the real world. Your network grows exponentially with each person you add, and you can interact with others using tools such as public and private messages and discussion forums.

Popular FOAF Social Networking Tools

There are hundreds of FOAF social networks on the Internet, each with its own user base and communication tools. In order to spread your organization’s message to as many potential clients as possible, you might decide that you want to create a profile on a couple of different communities.

On the other hand, your staff may not have the time to update numerous profiles or work with different platforms. Currently, there’s no way to manage multiple social network accounts from a single site or application; you have to log into each social networking site to check messages, interact, and discuss topics with that specific community.

When deciding which social networking site you should join, consider the features you’ll need and the audience you hope to reach. The following is a list of some of the more popular FOAF social networking applications. The sites below all offer free memberships, though some provide extra functionality if you pay for a subscription:

Flickr: A community based around digital images, Flickr lets you upload and share your favorite photos. While Flickr doesn’t offer individual user blogs, it does allow you to join or form groups where members can upload and share photos.

Flickr also allows you to add comments to your photos and supports tagging, whereby you add a keyword or “tag” to an image so that other users and search engines can find it more easily. And, if you publish your images on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, other users can add them to their blogs, increasing your organization’s presence elsewhere on the Web. (For more information about how this type of redistribution licensing works, visit Creative Commons’ Licenses page.)

Friendster: One of the first and best-known social networking applications, Friendster currently boasts nearly 30 million members. Through the site, users can share photos, blog, post to message boards, sort through classified ads, and create and join groups where members can share announcements and engage in discussions. Friendster categorizes groups by subject matter and has a designated section for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. There, you’ll find nonprofit groups ranging from high school students who want to help end global poverty to supporters of Amnesty International.

LinkedIn: Unlike many of the best-known social networking sites, LinkedIn focuses primarily on creating and maintaining professional contacts. You can use the site to touch base with former coworkers and classmates, find people employed in the nonprofit sector, and obtain professional references. The site, currently boasting 5.5 million users, supports the creation of groups, and has a dedicated category for nonprofits. LinkedIn offers plenty of resources for hiring employees, consultants, or service providers. What it doesn’t offer are discussions or forums, so if you’re looking to chat or talk about a specific topic, you’ll have to do that via email or instant messaging or using a different social networking application.

MySpace: MySpace is an extremely popular social networking site that doesn’t cater to a specific audience, unlike more targeted platforms such as LinkedIn or Care2. In February 2006, MySpace was the tenth most visited site on the Internet). MySpace lets you create groups or join one of the 10,000-plus groups formed by nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Unlike other social networking tools, MySpace lets you post videos, making it a good platform for exposing your nonprofit’s advocacy films to a larger audience.

Ryze: Similar in concept to LinkedIn, Ryze also emphasizes professional and career-based networking. Ryze lets users join groups (called “networks”) of like-minded people, though you’ll have to upgrade to a paying membership in order to create such networks yourself. Other features include the ability to add events, browse classified ads, and post job openings at your organization.

Tribe: Tribe takes its name from the nearly 45,000 online groups, or “tribes,” on its site. Tribes consist of groups of people who gather in Tribe’s forums to discuss a specific topic. Members of each tribe can post to message boards, upload photos, or list events that will be of interest to the community. Tribe’s groups are what bring the community together, allowing a high level of interaction and discussion. You can also add your favorite RSS feeds to your profile, write a blog, or share links from del.icio.us.

Navigating Social Network Challenges

Social networks can help you connect with similar people/companies but these sites are not without their share of obstacles. Because many individuals/companies lack the time to investigate multiple online communities or manage accounts on a handful of sites, many have suggested that they would benefit from the ability to log onto multiple platforms using a single tool. Although a fully functional, cross-platform social network log-in tool does not currently exist, some discussion participants speculated that a decentralized identity project called OpenID — which already works with blogging site LiveJournal — may be a progenitor of a multi-protocol social networking application.