More and more I am hearing about people using the online service Twitter, which is a way to communicate with friends, family and associates through short conversations of 140 characters or less.

From what I have been hearing, many of the top bloggers are no longer reading RSS feeds and are getting more out of Twitter. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net must feel like it is worth it - he has posted two excellent Twitter articles this week:

• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
• How to Use Twitter - Tips for Bloggers

What I want to know is, do you Twitter and have you found it to be beneficial to your overall networking?

Part of me is dying to try it and part of me feels like it will be one more distraction - so which part of me do I listen to?

UPDATE: I jumped into the Twitter pond! Tweet me.

While I use a variety of stats packages to monitor all my sites, AWstats is one of the packages that my web host, HostGator, provides us with (they also give you Webalizer). I was waiting for a back up to finish this morning and decided to check on my stats at AWstats and was surprised at what I saw:

Notice that not only StumbleUpon, but also Digg are being categorized as links from an Internet Search. Interesting.

From looking at the rest of the stats, it appears that the StumbleUpon and Digg traffic indicated in the Internet Search category is different from that coming from another category - Links from an External Page:

It appears that traffic coming from StumbleUpon and Digg in the Internet Search category are the results of people using those sites’ search functions and finding my pages, where as the traffic from the external page links are the result of people stumbling upon my pages or clicking on them directly within the Social Bookmarking sites.

Have social bookmarks “arrived”? Am I beginning to see the another benefit of using social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg? Or both? I’d love your take on it!

Related post:

• Essential Tools for Social Media

Getting social on the web does not just mean having a MySpace page - it is far beyond that! Getting social on the web is really the defining difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. In the first generation of the web, it was all about providing information to your readers - the web was a one-way street. Web 2.0 is all about the user and giving the user a voice - thus making it a two-way street.

For my Essential Tools series today, let’s talk about essential tools for being social on the web!

Defining the different ways to be social

There are different types of social on the web and each category has a different focus (with some overlap in functionality):

• Social Networking is probably the most widely known Web 2.0 term. From MySpace to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other similar sites, the focus of social networking is to connect you with others - your friends, people with similar interests, potential employers, and then give you the opportunity to find more connections as your profile grows.
• Social Bookmarking (like del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia) sites allow you to organize your favorite sites, tag them for keywords, and keep them all in one place. Very handy. However, what makes these sites social, is the ability for you to share them with others.
• Social Recommendation sites combine the best of social networking and bookmarking to create user generated recommendation sites. Sites like Digg, Netscape and StumbleUpon encourage users to submit items they like and then give others the opportunity to vote on them. There are also a large crop of smaller niche sites like BizzBites, Sk*rt, Babblz, BUMPzee and such that are evolving to cater to the specific needs of certain audiences.
• Social Content sites include Flickr, YouTube, and wikis to name a few. These are sites where users create and manage the content from photos to videos, information on a topic, and everything in between.
• Other sites such as MyBlogLog, Technorati, and Blog Catalog give users the ability to network, bookmark and recommend all under one handy roof.

Obviously these are just the tip of the iceberg! Check out Go2Web20.net for an amazing visual directory of Web 2.0 sites!

Making the most of your social life

• Get a good avatar. It is much easier to remember a picture than words, which is why avatars are so popular with the social crowd. Avatars help you create your social identity. Recommended avatars include a clear photo of yourself, your site/company logo, image that is easily identified.
• Be consistent with your identity. While it may make sense to have one identity for your business site and another for a personal or niche site, you don’t want to have 5 different user names for 5 different sites. It just makes it too hard to define your personal brand and it makes it difficult for your friends at one site to find you at another.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin! The number of social media sites is growing daily and you just can’t be everywhere. Pick a few sites that provide you with value - sites where your peers are - and establish yourself.
• Be active! Once you have found the sites you want to use to build your social presence - work them! Make friends, vote for articles, share your links. Your site traffic will thank you for it!

Social media plugins

There are a host of plug-ins you can add to your sites to help others Stumble, Digg, favorite, and bookmark you. Here are just a few of the Wordpress plug-ins that I use/have used or my friends recommend.

• Share This
• Sociable
• Add This
• Web Virtue - Share Your Post
  
• Feedflare
• Digg Button Plug-In

This post does not even begin to cover every aspect of social media, networking and bookmarking, but hopefully it gives those of you who are new to the social media arena a good starting point. For those of you who are using social media daily - share your tips, insights and tools with us!