Social networking, social media or just being social seems to be getting smaller every day. Over time we have seen some significant changes to how we communicate and networking is taking a new direction – or at least using different roads to get to the same place.
It probably all started when we could subscribe, not just to posts on a blog, but also to the comments left on a post. Suddenly, you could leave a comment, subscribe, and check out the responses without having to return. If a comment was worthy of response, you returned and added another comment. Social networking – yes. You are still developing a network by choosing which blogs, and more importantly, which commentators to respond to.
Facebook and Myspace have been around for a long time. Add instant communicators such as Pownce and Twitter and everything changes again. The world become even smaller when these services took blog feeds and blog installed widgets to publish their online Twitterings. Sites like Blogcatalog can now pick up on everything you do and publish a running commentary on your activity.
Rumor has it that Facebook will enable WordPress publishers and commentators the ability to communicate via comments left on blogs. Moveable Type already has a similar feature for users. Social networking no longer requires a lot of activity on third party sites. You can do a lot it by visiting blogs in your niche and communicating with them.
They say it’s a small world. It feels like it is getting smaller every day. One wonders with the introduction of browsers like Google’s Chrome, how much the search engines will absorb and use to rank websites. Time will tell. The world has shrunk!
