Social Networking has taken the world by a storm. The explosion in active users has invaded our lives like a ubiquitous army. Not a single day passes that I don't get an invitaion to become a friend, join a group, become a fan, or recieve a hug or blessing. Between Tweets, Facebook messages, and YouTube videos there is no place to hide. The President shares his "Weekly Address" on YouTube. Politicians and business leaders are "Tweeting" to stay in contact with their customers and constituents. Many people now have multiple Facebook pages -- Professional, Business, and Personal. Where is all this leading?

Some Facebook Statistics
- More than 400 million active users
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- Average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Twitter now has 75M users
The number of Twitter users has climbed to a lofty 75 million, but the growth rate of new users is slowing and a lot of current Twitterers are inactive, according to a recent study.

YouTube Is Huge
YouTube has just announced that it has surpassed yet another milestone, and this one's a doozy: 24 hours of video is now uploaded to the social video site every sixty seconds. Every second you are browsing YouTube, a full 24 minutes of video is uploaded to the site.

LinkedIn -- is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 8 April 2010, LinkedIn had more than 65 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

These are only a few of the most popular social networking sites. 

There are social networks for nearly every interest group.  The iZania online community at www.izania.com was a social network for descendants of Africa before Facebook, and Twitter, but we utilize these tools to reach an expanding audience.

There are implications for business, as well as professional and personal networking.


Here are three tips that will help to make your online networking a joy and not a burden:

1. Network with a Purpose. Only join those networks that serve YOUR puposes. If you don't have a good reason to say yes, the answer to the invitation should be "No."
2. Write for your grandmother and 1 Million Readers. Recognize that what you write could be seen by millions. Also, what you write could be embarrassing if your grandmother read it. If what you are about to say doesn't meet these two criteria. DON'T.
3. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There are tools to ban, delete, block, and screen what you read. The same holds true for others. To make your networking enjoyable, think of others before you hit the SEND Key.