Social Networking with Your Mac

Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

Social networking is one of the hottest topics in the computer and Internet field today. It refers to online communities where people share and interact with friends and colleagues, often developing new relationships. Social networking first became popular with MySpace, a youth-oriented network, but there are now many online communities geared toward adults who seek connections with others in their professional fields. Examples of these kinds of networks are LinkedIn and Facebook.

Mac users, who tend to enjoy social connections with other users, as evidenced by the large number of Apple user groups, have become widely involved in online social networking. There are even social networks just for Mac users. In this article, I describe one of the social networks specifically designed for Mac users, as well as two of the general networks that have large followings in the Mac community.

Facebook Groups
Facebook (www.facebook.com) is one of the most popular social networking sites. When you sign up for a Facebook account, you’ll be able to create a profile that can include as much or as little information about your personal and professional lives that you want to share with others. If you have a business, you can create a separate section just for your business. For example, I have a page for my ebooks business that includes information about my company, current news about the business and my RSS feed. Other Mac and Apple-related companies, such as O’Reilly books, also have business pages on Facebook.

Like many other social networks, Facebook has groups that people can join. This is one area of Facebook that might be of special interest to Mac users because of the large number of Apple groups and members on Facebook. For example, the “A is for Apple” group has over 13,000 members and the “Apple” group has over 18,000 members. Once you join a group, you can write messages on the group’s wall or start a discussion thread. You can also invite friends to join the group. There is probably an Apple or Mac group on Facebook that addresses your interests, but if you don’t find the exact type of group you want, you can create your own group and invite others to join.

World Wide Mac
World Wide Mac (http://macusers.ning.com) is a social network, similar to Facebook on a small scale, that is just for Mac users. Once you join the network (it’s free to join), you can create a profile for yourself, upload photos or videos, and invite friends to join. You also get a free blog and an email account. Your profile page can include your biography, a photo and links to your websites. There are applications you can add to make your profile more interesting and more personal. For example, I’ve added my RSS feed to let people know about my work and a fun application that shows me random pictures of adorable dogs. Every profile has a wall and you can write messages on your own wall or on other people’s walls.

If you want to make new friends on World Wide Mac, just visit someone’s profile and send them a message. Or you can join or create a group and find new Mac friends that way. There are currently 229 members on World Wide Mac, but, unfortunately, the site does not get much activity. Maybe if everyone who reads this article joins, together we can make World Wide Mac the Facebook of the Mac world.

Twitter
Twitter is a unique type of social network. On Twitter, you send very short messages, called “tweets,” to people who are following your activities on Twitter. For example, you might send a link to an interesting article or video you’ve viewed. Your followers can respond to your tweets, either with another tweet that can be viewed by anyone who visits your Twitter page or with a private, direct message.

Twitter is very popular with Mac “gurus.” Most of the experts in the field of Mac computers have Twitter accounts and regularly send interesting and informative tweets. For example, I followed Jason Snell, editorial director of MacWorld magazine, during the keynote speech at the recent MacWorld conference. He was tweeting live from the conference room and anyone following him could get up to the minute reports on the keynote speech. To see which Mac experts are on Twitter, view my list of “10 Mac Experts to Follow on Twitter.”

Conclusion
There are many ways that Mac users can join the online social networking revolution. In this article, I’ve described three options – Facebook groups, World Wide Mac and Twitter – but there are other types of social networking sites popular with Mac users. For example, many Mac users enjoy online bookmarking networks like Delicious. Take a dip into this new phenomenon with one of the sites I’ve described or search for “Mac social networking” on Google and explore some of the other options and you’ll probably find one that meets your social needs.

Copyright 2009 Claire J Rottenberg
All rights reserved

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of ebooks on Mac OS X 10.5, Safari, Mail, iPhoto ‘08, iTunes, and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (www.cjrtools.com/ebooks). Claire can often be found networking on World Wide Mac (macusers.ning.com/profile/ClaireRottenberg), Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Mac-OS-X-105-Leopard-ebooks/ ) and Twitter (twitter.com/cjrtools).