Be Selective With Your Social Networks
With plenty of social networks and limited time, Entrepreneur’s Jennifer Shaheen advices caution when joining them. “What is this new social network or affinity group all about? Is your potential customer in this group? To find the answers to these questions, spend some time looking at the demographics of the typical member. You can often find them by reviewing the information on the about page or the advertising section of the website. Check out third-party information on the community–this may include blogs, media outlets or research groups. Look for research that shows outcomes, not just the demographic or membership information.”

Is Your Networking Effective or Is Technology Making You Lazy?
Sandy Norton underlines the importance of follow-up in building relationships for networking. “We hear so much about personal branding but regardless of the newest buzz words, branding is nothing but your reputation and your integrity. As it has always been, your decision to ignore people and not follow-up properly will affect your reputation and bring questions about your integrity. With social media that affect can be faster and much more far reaching and damaging than in the past. Many companies have learned this the hard way. Don’t burn your bridges with people because you never know where they may be in the future. Networking isnot a sprint, it is like running a marathon. You need to be in it for the long haul for it to be successful.”

Reputation, Social Media And Your Boss
Mitch Joel shares the results of a research on corporate attitudes to social media on Twist Image. “Anytime there is a platform that is open and fairly democratized, institutions and companies more accustomed to “controlling the message” get worried and express the potential for corporate damages that could be associated with employees speaking their minds. In this study, 74% of executives felt that online social networking platforms make it very easy to damage a company’s reputation.”

Finding New Employees, via Social Networks
In the NY Times, Julie Weed features some of the methods companies employ to search for new talent on the web. “…Mr. Scanlan said that recruiting through his employees’ social networks was a natural progression from using Craigslist and job Web sites over the past few years. He hopes to make this grass-roots type of recruiting part of his company’s culture. ‘This is beyond the H.R. department,’ he said. ‘All employees should be talent recruiters.’

The new networking
Bill Lohmann discusses the do’s and don’ts of online networking in the Times Dispatch. “Talk to anyone who knows social media, and they use words like ‘genuine’ and ‘transparent,’ ‘personalization’ and ‘immediacy,’ ‘relevance’ and ‘value.’ Whether you’re an individual or an organization, forgetting any of those is the fastest way to have people tune you out. The same goes if you don’t produce anything worth reading, or, even worse, if you’re perceived to be a guy ringing a doorbell selling magazine subscriptions. People don’t want to be spammed. Or to hear what you ate for breakfast.”

Social networking — a different kind of friendship
On eConsultancy, Geno Prussakov takes a look at several types of social networks and varying degrees of closeness for online friendships. “Some believe that all social networks are generally the same, but in a video posted by BusinessWeek a week ago Danah Boyd of Microsoft pointed out that the assumption that there is essentially only one sort of social networks (that we are talking about in different ways) is wrong. There are, in fact, 3 types of social networks: (i) personal networks (people you trust, and sincerely care about), (ii) behavioral social networks (people you spend time with, and communicate with on a regular basis), and (iii) articulated social networks (examples: cell phone address book, Facebook, Twitter). ‘The challenge is that we don’t understand the relationship between these three types of social networks and we’re trying to find ways to make sense of the theory that has come out of sociology and try to apply it’ to our marketing said Boyd.”

The use—or nonuse—of social tools sparks Twitterstorm
Lauren Barack from the School Library Journal on the role of social media in modern education. “The issue comes at a critical time. Library media specialists, already hampered by dwindling budgets over the years, are feeling the impact of the current recession, with further cuts to resources and even staff. So how to remain relevant has never been more important. The fact that the conversation was itself conducted via social media only underscores the need for media specialists to be conversant with these tools.”

Confessions of a social network-aholic
Leslie Toy describes getting burned out by a little too much connectivity in SGV Tribune. “Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a hermit who hates human contact. But something about the increased ability to keep in touch makes me more possessive of my privacy. As people my age continue to grow up with ever-accelerating technology, it will be a challenge to stay in the present instead of worrying about how to word current whereabouts or how pictures will appear on public profiles. When you obsess about what your life looks like to others, I find you forget to enjoy it for yourself.”