Social Networking

Hi all,
We have all heard about social networking sites, the most common ones being twitter, facebook, bebo, orkut.Most of us have heard about atleast one of these, some must have heard about Ning and many must have heard about Linkedin. In this post i will be briefly discussing about Ning,Linkedin and Facebook.Based on my experience and understanding I will be concluding my choice among these.Comments welcome.
Ning
I myself was totally unaware of Ning, until one of our course participant Debra Maddocks sent a invite.I found Ning to be more like a blog spot with option of commenting and live updates.The difference between gmail blogger and Ning is the layout of Ning which is so user friendly and you can even have a free account in Ning just like Gmail blogger.However, i dont find it leading its way to being a powerful social networking platform.
Linkedin
I signed in Linkedin ages ago for professional social networking...ummm moreover a place to connect with friends at a professional level, it started with one of my friend asking me to connect with him. I find it to be a great search tool,like search and you will find :-)
Try having a account with facebook and linkedin and google yourself, your linkedin account will be searched first,to look for a person with specific parameters, example if i have a friend xyz working as a oracle dba, if i type his name plus profession and if he has a linked in account it will come up and more the connections you have in linked,the more chances of you to be found.Isnt that great? Besides, LinkedIn Answers boards has more than 2,000,000 answers to a variety of questions for you . The subject matter in both Groups and Answers covers a wide enough of topics that there is value for everyone to be participating. It has some scope, but comes with limitations, as not many will view it as a personal networking, it has a "extremely professional" networking look. Most people perceive that you must have some expertise to share in linkedin with your connections and also a way to market yourself for job.
Facebook
Among Ning,linkedin and Facebook, i believe its easy to share most of the "information" through facebook. Most of the people i have met feel comfortable around facebook more than Linkedin. I suppose Facebook can be facilitated easily through groups, just recently i became a fan of Facebook in education to know whats happening with relation to facebook as a educational tool,the latest update from this application is
"The University of Cambridge features beautiful campus photography in monthly Facebook photo albums — a great way to spread school spirit and keep fans engaged.".
In this context,facebook's Mini Feed feature is useful in seeing a quick snapshot on the latest happenings within your network,the ability to supply how you know a .This is especially interesting when you and one your contacts know the same person, but through different ways. I quite like the "Publisher" feature of facebook to post information and messages which appear on the user's own Wall, on their friend's Walls, as well as the News Feed on the Home page.In facebook users are able to import blogs from Blogger and other blogging services. Facebook has a micro-blogging feature called "status updates" which allows users to post messages for all their friends to read. Facebook events are a way for members to let friends/other users in group know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects, thereby forming online communities!
I vote for Facebook.
GO Facebook!!!!!!
Cheers
Meena