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Social Networking sites can be useful, if you're using the right one, and if you're using it for the right reason. Here's a bit of a lesson I've learned, and I think it illustrates the huge difference between Facebook and Myspace.

I am a podcaster. I run a website that's open to anyone who wants to have a free blog or a podcast feed. I've started using the social networking sites as a place to put my latest podcast, or my latest rant, with a redirect back to my site so people can hear or read more if they really like it. Where MySpace and Facebook differ in this regard, is that your Facebook friends are related to you in some way. For instance, folks I work with, or folks I see every day. In one or two cases, I've run into people I haven't seen in 20 years. But that's the exception on Facebook, in my experience. These people in my network already know I have a show, they all subscribe to it. I have managed an extensive New Media Group within the Facebook site, but these are folks like me, and pimping a podcast out to other podcasters is akin to preaching to the saved.

MySpace is excellent in this regard. It's an open network, so anyone can go my profile and see it, friend me, and not have to confirm that they're my second cousin twice removed. It's a renewable resource, because everytime I put a new show out, I get new listeners, and quite a bit of them come from the MySpace Link. I get a few from the other networking sites, but MySpace give me more traffic than the others combined.

To sum up, my experience is that social networking is a tool, and the two have very different uses. Facebook is great for families, business relationships, and maybe networking within your niche. MySpace is where the online content seems to be gravitating, and where the audience is.

Learn more about this author, Kristen Roley.
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