Social Networking Beyond Twitter

I know, I know, the title of this post makes me throw up in my mouth a little too but you have to get those search engines wet somehow…

Anyway, I left Twitter. That’s not news to anyone. What may be news is that Twitter isn’t the be-all and end-all of social networking. It’s great if you want to talk about Strictly Come Dancing or AA Gill shooting a baboon but an awful lot of it is just sound and fury signifying nothing. Since bailing, I’ve been looking at a few other options presented by this here internet and I’ve re-acquainted myself with a some old favourites too:

RADAR is a photographic version of Twitter. Instead of saying something, you take a picture on your phone, caption it and post it. I used to have an account there, which I’ve forgotten the password to, so I’ve just opened a new one and there’s nothing there yet but I’m going to make a concerted effort to put stuff up everyday and see how it goes. There’s something really cool about seeing people lives chronicled visually and it allows for a lot more creativity than most tweets – most people seem to avoid the standard friends and family pics and really try for something more abstract and interesting. Go see.

TUMBLR has been a favourite place of mine for a while. If you haven’t visited the Little Brain, go have a look around. Tumblr is a mini-blogging site that allows you to post pics, links, text, music; pretty much anything you like. You can follow people and they can follow you and it has a great interface. If you have an iPhone, the Tumblr app is a joy.

DELICIOUS is an old favourite; a way to post and share bookmarks of interesting places you’ve found online. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s surprisingly useful. Again, I forgot the password to my old account, so I’ve started a new one here

STUMBLEUPON has to be one of my favourite things on the whole internet and I’ve been neglecting it for far too long. If you like to surf the net, Stumbleupon is the best board you could hope for. You sign up for a free account, tell it what kind of things you’re interested in, then hit the “stumble” button and it randomly takes you to a website it thinks you might like. If you like where you go, you hit the “thumbs up” button and it marks the site as a favourite for you and your followers. Then you just hit “stumble” again… Kiss goodbye to a lot of hours with this puppy! Again, I have a new account there.

All of these sites, except Radar, have toolbar buttons for your browser, which make them really easy to integrate into your everyday web use and allow you to share your finds with people as you go.

Despite leaving Twitter, I still want to stay in touch with people and I hope these sites will provide a new and interesting way to do that without sucking as much time out of the day as Twitter seemed to. I hope some of you give them a go and I’d be very glad to hear of any similar recommendations you may have.

That’s a lot of words without swearing. Now fuck off and explore.

UPDATE: I’ve added a “My Lifestream” banner to the sidebar here, so you can see new posts etc on the above named sites. Unfortunately, Lifestream doesn’t seem to support Radar yet but all the others are there.