A few weeks back, I wrote part 1 of a series on my usage of social media/social computing sites. The goal was to finish this mini-study and have some observations based on my use and non-use of different technologies and updating services.

Last post, I talked about blogging, Twitter and Friendfeed, though since that time I have changed the way I use Friendfeed. I have since joined a few FriendFeed groups about specific conversations – an interesting way to parse the info overload of tracking too many friends. Also, I get a daily email from Friendfeed to let me know everything that happened – including linked comments – on the feeds I follow. So, I can scroll through everything once a day instead of the terminal interruptions. Like a daily feed update from an active blog or news site, this is a very helpful service to me.

Plurk: Calling itself a social journal of your life, Plurk shows your updates in a timeline of other Plurkers. You can upload pictures, comments on other people’s plurks. The goal is to have high karma points, which you get by writing plurks and commenting on other plurks.

I am a very occasional Plurker – really, I wanted to check it out, and like a new piece of technology that I don’t necessarily have a big use for, my interest has fizzled. Or plurked. The basic problem I have with Plurk is that I already have other tools that fill the same purpose, and so I am not looking for a new one, damn my Plurk Karma to hell.

SocialThing!: SocialThing aggregates all of my feeds in one place and is destination oriented, so I don’t visit much. But, really I don’t have to, because no matter where I post — here, Facebook, Twitter, etc – its all tracked through SocialThing! I’ve got a soft spot for them because they are local AND useful, and, now that they were bought by AOL they may be able to do some more innovative things, so I will watch and experiment.

MySpace: Sucks, lets be frank. I created a profile for my dog about 2 years ago, to check it out with low commitment. He even blogged (he’s very smart, part border collie). But, the only people who wanted to friend me (besides my nephew) were 18-25 y.o. women who wanted to show me pictures of their fake breasts. Yawn. Oh yes, and its extremely slow. I do visit MySpace pages of music groups, but never login to my account. I can’t even remember my login. Anyone remember what it is?

Facebook: Facebook is my social network of choice, used for both professional (not as much, though I have cemented business deals using it) and personal use. Like most people of my age, I’ve re-connected with old friends from school, friends who’ve moved away, relatives and have kept up business friendships here as well. I use it to:

• upload and show pictures
• (for now, unless they shut down) listen to Pandora and have my radio stations loaded
• track what friends and others are doing
• social gaming (mostly, Scramble and Word Twist with my niece and a friend who lives in Oregon)
• IM chatting with friends who are on Facebook
• posting bookmarks to my blog, other blog posts or news items I find interesting or worthwhile
• post status updates from Twitter, Friendfeed and within Facebook as well
• some social app use — mostly Poke Pro, occasional Fan of things
• send messages to people I am connected to within Facebook
• sometimes participate in Groups (not often)

I don’t like Facebook’s new layout, and have stuck with the old one. Facebook has pretty decent search functionality and makes it easy to find people you know. Generally speaking, Facebook is my social network of choice because I have much invested in it, I have a lot of connections, and it is personally useful and fun.
Next post on this subject will include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Flickr, Pandora, IntenseDebate, StumbleUpon.