You’ve heard about Twitter and Flickr, Digg and Facebook, right? But maybe you have no idea what they do, or why so many people care about them.
The whole point of the sites below is to build and expand your ONLINE network. Similar to going to a conference or “belly to belly” networking luncheon – These sites are a way for you to login to a website to create that same experience – but on a much larger scale. At a luncheon, you may get 10-15 business cards? Online, there are people that have a network of over 100,000! Seek these people out once you get an account and create your profile, and learn from them.
- Twitter – www.Twitter.com – Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time. You
can type posts of up to 160 characters (called “Tweets”) about what’s on your mind (about the weather, your business, sports updates, anything!) - StumbleUpon – www.StumbleUpon.com – StumbleUpon lets you “channelsurf” the best-reviewed sites on the web. When you “StumbleUpon” a great website, you can tag it for others to view.
- Digg – www.Digg.com – Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Users will actually mark they like (or “Digg”) a site, post, article, anything. You want to get Diggs.
- MySpace – www.MySpace.com – A social networking site where you build a profile and network of friends, family, co-workers, etc. – and then you can link to those people’s networks to expand your own.
- Facebook – www.Facebook.com – Also a social networking site – but the most popular one to date with almost 200 million users.
- YouTube – www.YouTube.com – A site that allows people to easily upload and share video clips. YouTube is the leader in online video.
- Flickr – www.Flckr.com – The best online photo management and sharing application in the world.
- PhotoBucket – www.PhotoBucket.com – Another premier site on the Internet for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos and graphics.
- Reddit – www.Reddit.com – A social news website where users can post links to content on the web.
- Metacafe – www.MetaCafe.com – One of the world’s largest video sites, attracting more than 40 million unique viewers each month.
- Del.icio.us – www.del.icio.us.com – A social bookmarking site (meaning you can bookmark sites, content, etc. to and share your “bookmarks” with others).
- Propeller – www.Propeller.com – A social news aggregator operated by AOL-Netscape. Similar to Digg.
- Linked-In – www.Linked-In.com – LinkedIn is an online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.
- Google Videos – http://video.google.com – A free video sharing and video search engine service from Google.
- Yahoo Videos – http://video.yahoo.com – Offers features to upload, share, rate and watch videos.
Do I have an account at all of the sites listed above? No.
Should I? Well, if I want to gain exposure quickly online, then yes. *I need to get on it!* 
In future posts, I plan to go in-depth on a few of these sites to tell you how to maximize your potential in getting online traffic to your site or blog, without wasting all day sitting on the computer cruising these sites! For now tell me what sites you have an account at – I’ll seek you out and become your friend!
