Social Networking Tools

Below is a short (but comprehensive list) of these platforms organized by focus of community.

PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING:

• www.linkedin.com - Unlike many of the best-known social networking sites, LinkedIn focuses primarily on creating and maintaining professional contacts. You can use the site to touch base with former coworkers and classmates, find people employed in the nonprofit sector, and obtain professional references. The site, currently boasting 5.5 million users, supports the creation of groups, and has a dedicated category for nonprofits. LinkedIn offers plenty of resources for hiring employees, consultants, or service providers. What it doesn't offer are discussions or forums, so if you're looking to chat or talk about a specific topic, you'll have to do that via email or instant messaging or using a different social networking application.
  
• www.ryze.com - Similar in concept to LinkedIn, Ryze also emphasizes professional and career-based networking. Ryze lets users join groups (called "networks") of like-minded people, though you'll have to upgrade to a paying membership in order to create such networks yourself. Other features include the ability to add events, browse classified ads, and post job openings at your organization.

GENERAL SOCIAL NETWORKS

• www.tribe.net - Tribe takes its name from the nearly 45,000 online groups, or "tribes," on its site. Tribes consist of groups of people who gather in Tribe's forums to discuss a specific topic. Members of each tribe can post to message boards, upload photos, or list events that will be of interest to the community. Tribe's groups are what bring the community together, allowing a high level of interaction and discussion. You can also add your favorite RSS feeds to your profile, write a blog, or share links from del.icio.us.
  
• www.friendster.com - One of the first and best-known social networking applications, Friendster currently boasts nearly 30 million members. Through the site, users can share photos, blog, post to message boards, sort through classified ads, and create and join groups where members can share announcements and engage in discussions. Friendster categorizes groups by subject matter and has a designated section for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. There, you'll find nonprofit groups ranging from high school students who want to help end global poverty to supporters of Amnesty International.
• www.orkut.com

PRIMARILY YOUTH AUDIENCE

• www.myspace.com - MySpace is an extremely popular social networking site that doesn't cater to a specific audience, unlike more targeted platforms such as LinkedIn or Care2. In February 2006, MySpace was the tenth most visited site on the Internet). Besides offering user blogs and message boards, MySpace has a classified ad section where nonprofits can place job listings for free, and a space where you can announce upcoming events. MySpace lets you create groups or join one of the 10,000-plus groups formed by nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Unlike other social networking tools, MySpace lets you post videos, making it a good platform for exposing your nonprofit's advocacy films to a larger audience.
• www.tagged.com
• www.tagworld.com

COMMUNITIES FOCUSED AROUND IMAGES

• www.flickr.com - Flickr lets you upload and share your favorite photos. While Flickr doesn't offer individual user blogs, it does allow you to join or form groups where members can upload and share photos. Flickr also allows you to add comments to your photos and supports tagging, whereby you add a keyword or "tag" to an image so that other users and search engines can find it more easily. And, if you publish your images on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, other users can add them to their blogs, increasing your organization's presence elsewhere on the Web. (For more information about how this type of redistribution licensing works, visit Creative Commons' Licenses page.)
• www.textamerica.com
• www.yafro.com

VALUES ORIENTED

• www.care2connect.com - This site helps activists network and mobilize around specific issues, from human rights to environmental protection. Care2 lets you create or join groups devoted to a cause; start and sign petitions that can be sent to Congress and other lawmakers; share and browse photos; post to message boards; solicit donations; and publicize your organization's events. Currently, Care2 has more than 5 million members.
• www.gather.com - A social networking site with a heavy focus on content, Gather offers plenty of tools for nonprofits that want to share their stories with others. In addition to photos, Gather allows you to publish blogs (called "articles"), which can be tagged and rated according to usefulness by other users. Articles and images with the highest rankings appear on the home page and generally gain more visibility on the site.
  
  Gather also allows users to create and join groups, where they can share images and articles with people who have similar interests. Plans are in the works to add a podcast-publishing feature to the site.
• www.xianz.com – Christian focused

OTHER

• www.last.fm - Music-oriented OSN
• www.facebook.com – College-oriented OSN
• www.everyonesconnected.com – British-based OSN