Networking – PFP Assignments

1. Join an Online Social Network
Join a full-featured, Web 2.0-based social network like Facebook or Plaxo Pulse, or a more primitive “first-generation” social network like Orkut or MySpace. If you aren’t sure which one you want to join, check out the big List of Social Networking Websites at Wikipedia. See if you can find one that reflects your specific interests, and which has a good privacy policy and gives the user a lot of control over the ways they can manage what they learn/watch about their friends lives (they way Facebook lets you manage your “mini-feeds about all your friends there), and the group collaboration tools they can use (Facebook’s are the best, at present). On Facebook, users can install about 5,000 (and counting) different types of applications on their FB home page, which they can use to keep track of, give feedback to, or play games with their online friends. Once you’ve set up your profile at your social network of choice, consider inviting some of your family and friends (from your Family+Friends page) to join you. Getting your friends and family into the digital online world will allow you to follow their lives much more easily than ever before. Let us know below which network you chose to join, and what you think of it so far (even if you’ve only spend 20 minutes in it, and are looking around for the first time). (Social Network name, plus 1 paragraph description evaluation “so far.”)


Facebook:

Facebook was an easy choice, considering I already have a Facebook page. I got sucked into it back when I attended Buffalo State, back when Facebook was exclusively for college students. At first I thought it was cool, but I soon realized that it was just another place for frat and sorority members to brag about how much they had drunk / smoked the night before, to find out who was screwing who, and to carry the drama of their real lives onto the internet in a much more efficient manner. However, since Facebook opened up to the general public, it has changed somewhat. Now I can keep in touch with all my friends from back home who might not have gone to school, or my family, and just mess around with the different apps people are constantly coming out with. I love seeing video recordings of jam sessions from my buddy's blues rock jam group back in Boston, and gaining rank as a Jedi Knight. Also, the "groups" function of Facebook are nice, it's a convenient place for people with similar interests to meet. I'm fairly certain, though, that Facebook's privacy policy stipulates very little hesitance to sell your personal information to third party comapnies, and I'm not so sure how I feel about that.

deviantArt:

This is another online community that I have belonged to for a few years now. It's not so much a web 2.0 social network, but to me it's worth belonging to. It's an art-sharing site, where you can join and post your artwork (including everything from music files, to digital art, to traditional drawing/painting, anime fanart, prose, poetry, etc.), buy and sell prints of your or others' works, etc. You can chat in chatrooms tailored to specific types of art, or even special areas of interest within one genre. The community is massive, with nearly 50,000,000 deviations (art pieces) submitted by users to date. It's a good way to get exposed, to make contacts, and to receive comments and critiques on your work, thereby helping you to improve. If you're interested in finding me on deviantArt, my page is http://dreamscape-painter.deviantart.com.


2. Advice: Join a Business Social Network
Create a profile for yourself (a "digital business card") on a good business social network like LinkedIn or Xing. Look around there for someone you can friend who has advanced skills in one of your areas of professional interest. Send them a friend request, telling them why you want them in your network. If you keep coming back to these networks and doing searches for people who 1) live in your vicinity, and 2) have skills in areas you are interested, or 3) work at companies you are interested in, you can slowly but steadily grow your network of professional contacts, and by watching what they are doing, learn more about what kinds of things you can do in your industry as well.
No writing required for this item, just read and consider it.


Ready to start using this wiki page for to record and reflect on your personal Networking activities? Go ahead and keep writing at the top of this page once you've finished these assignments. May you have a happy, well-connected, and productive future!