Thing 21 Other Social Networks

Yelp, reviews looks interesting. It might be worth joining just because so many people have trouble finding us or knowing about us.

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning and added a comment to the discussion When/Where are you finding time to work on the 23 things.
I've also added the small 23 Things Ning badge to the sidebar of the blog. I will have to remember that the widgets for the slideshow, music player, and video player are on the same page as the badges.

Steve Campion's Aug 30, 2007 article in WebJunction (I am a member of Web Junction and even think I know where my password is!) makes the most relevant point I've read about social networking:
"Learning about social networking through a site that interests a specific individual helps him/her understand why millions of people ...invest time in the social web."

This is only too true.

I am a member of a social networking site based on a hobby/arts interest. It was one I had to get on a waiting list to join and then receive an admission from the site administrators. It is a great place for learning and finding out about new things going on in this area of interest. It is totally engrossing. It's well designed and doesn't have flashing flashy intrusive advertisements. As a matter of fact, someone recently posted a discussion thread there about why the site is better than MySpace. Many responses were from people who fit right into the target MySpace demographic and they said things like they liked the lack of offensive advertising and lack of drunken photo/content and that the people there were all there for the same reason, a shared interest.

The Houghton Mifflin Peterson Guide information mentioned in the Can Gather.com Get Book Lovers Online article (thanks Nan Hoekstra for posting the link to the article in the comments to this thing) had to be searched for. It appears that exceprts from these nature guides may have stopped in December...too bad. Gather.com seemed a bit hard to find content/navigate, but then perhaps this is just idiosyncratic of all social networking sites that are unexplored.

I am thinking that the Ning, Wiki and/or blog might be useful to set up for a Fire Librarian's group I belong to!