My New Networks

I’ve blogged on this site for coming up to a year now. I’ve personally gone through some interesting experiences – learning about what I like to write about; enduring the failure of one of business ventures – Changed Life Ltd; moving a couple of times, returning to my mothballed consulting practice – Phronesis, and finally deciding to open up a space on facebook.

I resisted taking up space on the most popular social networks because I thought they where not business like enough plus I have 3 or 4 of my children that hang out on them. My three youngest on Facebook and two of three older ones on Myspace.

I tried Myspace for about a week – too noisy. People popping up wanting to tell me about bands that I never heard of and really did not like because of their sound – being into jazz and avant garde type stuff myself – maybe a little socially relevant hip hop – like Common or Mos Def. The dumb stuff I have no patience with. So I set up and as quickly deleted my profile.

I found several new spaces that fit my interest – TeeBeeDee, Marzar and the one that I have the highest hopes for is Zude. TeeBeeDee is a site for the over 40 crowd – a real smart mix of people. The conversation in varied and challenging. Unlike Marzar or even Facebook I don’t see TeeBeeDee as a place where I need to make or bring business contacts. I might even acquire a friend or two.

It has some what of a feel like a dating site – only because there are lots of discussions about relationships, sex, dating, all from a Boomer stand point. On the other hand, there is conversation about cooking, illness, spirituality and lots of other subjects.

Marzar is a pretty vanilla business social network – the user interface is clumsy, but I have built up a sizable network and formed a group on Coaching. It’s small enough that having 333 “contacts” puts me on the second page ahead of the Marzar’s CEO. The Coaching Group that I’ve started is one of the top 4. So it’s OK.

Zude on the other hand is a new concept for me completely. It claims that you can consolidate all of your Internet sites on it and you have unlimited space to work with. The first thing I liked about it is off-the-hook flexible – everything is drag and drop. You grab a site and drag onto your Zude page. Don’t let me fool you – it’s still early and so if you need perfect – Zude’s not there yet But I like a challenge – I see enough, to go for it.

Then there’s Facebook. I’m writing this post in an ap that is suppose to post this into my blog. Facebook has all these mini apps that do all kinds of stuff very easily. I wish every social network was as easily configured. Because it works so well and I’ve found so many of my business (LinkedIn and Mazar) folks here it looks like I going to have take my shot here, too.

I even let my three youngest kids know that I’m here and that they should not bother me for I’m going to stay out of their way. If you happen to see Oldude59 anywhere – that’s me. Say hello – link to me – add me to your friends list – cause I’m an open networker that believes in the “law of weak connections” – you know, that the most potential for outrageous fortune is most likely to come from the most unexpected relationship.

There is another space that I’ve signed up for – projectstars – not sure how it works – I can only say this – they claim that each quarter that the most “active”, whatever that mean contributors with be given some of the stock in the site. Not sure how that happens or what means – maybe I’ll tell you next time.

~ by Reputationist on November 8, 2007.