How Many Social Sites Do You LOVE?

[Jack Humphrey]

We all know there are zillions of social sites. It feels like the tsunami of new sites is dying down. The "me too" Facebook type social sites. Seems like people are finally needing more than just a place to network.

Thanks, got plenty of those. How about a few places I can't live without for a change?

Here are mine:

Twitter
StumbleUpon
Digg (but just for news, I don't market there anymore)
Facebook

Occasionally:

Squidoo
HubPages
Mixx
Reddit
Mashable
Sphinn

What are your favorites? Which ones do you get the most traffic and branding from? Which ones are worth the time you put into them?

[Zita Gustin]

I love and use Biznik. It is a growing site which is based here in Seattle. They combine online networking with a face to face component that fits nicely with how I prefer to network. I have found it to be a great place to position my articles and I get a fair amount of traffic from the site.

[Christopher]

Nice, Zita! Who fits your style of networking? Who would be the kind of people that can go and check that out?

[Zita Gustin]

My style of networking is for people who really do want to make connections and build relationships with each other. This would be in contrast to people who are more focused on making a sale in the here and now. I guess, I'm talking about the folks who see networking as a gardener would see his/her garden. You prepare the soil, you plant the seeds, you take care of the seed through watering and fertilizing, and later you bring the plants to harvest. Hunters don't do well within my style of networking. Nor do people who want immediate results.

With that said, Biznik is for independent business owners and really the only people that they don't allow to become members are those who are associated with MLM companies. In that way, they are similar to BNI which does not allow a person to talk about the recruiting side of their business.

Dan McComb and Lara Eve Feltin are the founders of Biznik. Dan is very good at SEO. Because of that, Biznikers enjoy high Google ratings in relation to their profiles and articles on Biznik. You can learn more by visiting the site. I have a featured article there right now titled Who's in Your Wallet: A Power Networking Strategy and Year End Inve.... Many of my articles earn over a 1000 views on this site over time. Also, if you would like to learn more about Dan and Lara, I interviewed them on my internet show at BizTalk with Zita. Their interview is broken into 4 parts and here is part 1.

Thanks for asking and I hope that helped to answer your question.

[Christopher]

I like Twitter and StumbleUpon.

Twitter has been good to me. It's a nice place to get those short to the point exchanges with people and after making friends I move some convos to email.

I just started to get back on the horse with my other social sites. But I can tell already that I enjoy StumbleUpon the most for buzzing sites and sharing interests. It's an easy interface and a good for linking from your page.

I use Facebook sparingly for college and one business friend. I use it for posting up crazy things to entertain myself. Haven't used it for business connections yet. Haven't found a reason too. I'm open for it though.

I could use another good NING site to get into.

[Michael Lofton]

Squidoo and Blogs seem to get the immediate (organic) rankings on search engines for my clients. As well as Propeller and Mixx for bookmarks. I'm finding StumbleUpon very interesting. We get lots of traffic, However, very (very) 'low' percentage of buyers for products/services. I'm trying to determine if Stumble really provides other benefits besides traffic flow with their 'no-Go's!'? ... aside from social... Article/Video Submissions are still kick'n it!
m.

[Christopher]

That is interesting about StumbleUpon. Lots of traffic just might be that big benefit. Have you tested out changeups on the sites Stumblers see? They could be looking for better content, different styles, something attention grabbing.

[george brandt]

Like most I think I like to use twitter for convenience, much like stumble it’s just is there whenever I want it.

For linking I like squidoo and hubpages and use sooo many social bookmarking sites.

The blog here is a little more “friendly” than many if I want to post something out of left field. I tend to get off topic at times when I grow tired of being marketed.

[Wayde McKelvy]

My favorites match yours pretty closely, but I have to admit, I like Squidoo quite a bit for networking, sharing ideas, and increasing general interest in projects I'm working on. I like that you don't have to be a techno-master to use Squidoo and the community is a friendly one.

[Tim Buchalka]

http://www.friendfeed.com

Great way to get all your web 2.0 sites rss feeds in the one place. Would be perfect if it was not using the nofollow attribute.

But I do get traffic/twitter followers, etc from it.

Cheers