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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

All aTwitter about being Linkedin to Facebook

In addition to this daily Blog, I have now signed up at several of the social networking (SN) sites.

I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn and ActiveRain and Twitter and RealEstateGlobalNetwork.

You may send me a Tweet at www.twitter/com/NormWerner

One thing that was bit frustrating at first was the fact that all of those sites seem to have their own Blogs and I just don't have the time to do them all. Then I figured out how to point them all back to this Blog and now it’s all OK.

My initial impressions were that those sites require a lot of time to keep updated and that most of the posters to them are either searching for someone or trying to sell something. The question that all of them seem to ask the user to constantly update is "What are you doing right now?" That's sort of like that question that you hear people on cell phones asking all the time - "Where are you right now?"

My initial reaction was, “Who cares what I'm doing or where I'm at right now?” But apparently there are folks who do care, or who have nothing better to do that to seek answers to those questions. Within days of setting up my Twitter account I have 14 people "following" me, which means that they are looking for posts from me to answer that question. I’m following 6 people right now myself; including David Gregory of Meet the Press and George Stephanopoulos, the TV commentator. David is the better Tweeter. George just tends to ask obscure questions that require the reader to go to his web site for answers. David give his followers small snippets of his daily life on the road and getting ready for his show.

Actually, as I get deeper into this whole SN phenomenon and read about how people are starting to use the “networks” that spring up around them, it makes some sense from both a personal and business point of view. I’m about over posting the Tweets where I inform the world that I’m going to bed or about to go in a meeting. While those are valid answers to the key question, I’ve concluded that no one really cares and that I’ll need to get with the program of providing something of value in my posts. I direct them here for longer posts, since Tweets (the posts on Twitter) are only about 140 characters long. Twitter users have now set up a group on LinkedIn.com that they call a Twittering group, but which seems like is actually just a big, open blog (they call the posts discussions).

I keep getting invitations to join other SN sites that focus mainly on finding long lost friends or acquaintances, but so far I’ve resisted that.

I did sign up to start blogging on Trulia.com and I post occasionally at Zillow.com, both of which are trying to expand into the SN world.

So look me up or send me a friends invite if you are on Facebook or LinkedIn or ActiveRain and send me a Tweet if you join Twitter. This Friday I’m getting a group from our office together to get all of them signed up for a few of these sites. So, if you hear a bunch of Tweeting this weekend, you’ll know what that’s all about. Got to go have breakfast now (now you know the answer to the question, “What am I doing right now?”).

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