Social Networks has taken on a new dimension in the past couple of years with the advent of several sites on the Internet. I’ve dabbled in several of them and still have accounts on a few of these sites, some of which I use and most of which I don’t use. I think Friendster was the first of these sites that I created an account on a couple of years ago, primarily because it was very popular in the Philippines and several of the people I worked with over there encouraged me to sign up. After “leaving” my job at AMI Semiconductor, and because the Friendster website really sucked, I pretty much stopped using it and haven’t logged in for probably a year. Perhaps my account is now dead?

Facebook, Seesmic, and Twitter next captured my attention. Seesmic was oriented around video. I recorded a few, but even though handling the video was easy and straightforward, I found I much preferred to write rather than be a talking head. With the written word I can think about it, work on it, revise it, and eventually either delete or publish. Video editing is incredibly time consuming and until someone builds some software to dramatically reduce the complexity, I’ll just leave video alone for the most part.

In January of this year, however, Facebook almost overnight became really useful. I had reached some kind of a critical mass of people on my friends list, and more importantly, a critical mass of people on my friends list that I actually was interested in what they were saying and doing. I have currently 148 friends on Facebook, but only about half of them everupdate their status. A couple only play games (and I have those games hidden, so I don’t see much from them either). I check Facebook often. I have the iPhone Facebook app loaded and use it when I’m away from my computer. Facebook is definitely the 2009 Social Network application.

Twitter continues to be my other major social network site. I have it open all the time on my computer and when I’m away from home I check it rather often. I currently follow 310 people and 460 people are following me on Twitter. I’m thinking it’s about time to trim the Twitter follow list down a bit as it sometimes takes up a lot of time.

Facebook has become the primary means for keeping up on what’s happening with a lot of my extended family. Twitter is the place to keep up with what’s happening with friends and colleagues, but more importantly Twitter is how I get my news. When anything happens, it seems to show up on Twitter almost immediately.

I suspect we’re just at the leading edge of online social networking. This year has proven that it works and is useful. I’m really looking forward to what will come in the next year or two.

Ta ta for now!