Pros and cons of social networking

Stop biting those nails.  We’ll know soon enough.

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Swivet lists the pros and cons of various social networking sites (in completely normal, non-techy language)including MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and more.

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Scott Karp Publishing 2.0 talks about how to increase your followers on the microblogging site Twitter.  Specifically, he talks about ”narcissisistic” Tweets — updates that only refer to yourself / your product — versus linking.  This concept (referring only to yourself vs. linking to others) can also apply to blogs.  While an author (or publishing house or freelance publicist) obviously wants to promote their book(s), if you only ever talk about your book(s), you risk losing the interest of readers.  On the other hand, if you also link to similar blogs / sites, not only do you provide variety for your readers, but you reach out to other bloggers.  (When you mention another blog on your site, the other blogger gets a “ping.”  Obviously, popular blogs like Boing Boing or Gawker will get zillions of pings, most of which they will ignore by necessity, but many bloggers do keep track of who mentions them and will investigate those blogs.)