If you have a website, you should be social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is the process of saving a webpage in a place where other people can see it (that’s the “social” part) and in many cases others vote on your submissions.

Why you should do this for your website is obvious. The more opportunities to share your web pages with others, the more visitors you will have. The more places you post links to your content, the better your website will rank in the search engines. The benefits are strongest when your material is voted up to the home page; many more people see the material and on many social bookmarking websites your link becomes DoFollow only once the membership have voted it “popular.”

How you should do social bookmarking is quite another thing, and I see people being burned in the process every day. People who don’t take the time to understand what social bookmarking is all about will at best have their submissions removed and at worst have their account and even their website banned. Here are the ten golden rules. With these in hand, you are unlikely to be burned and, with a little effort, you stand a great chance of reaping some substantial rewards.

1. GIVE. This is very simple. Just as in every situation in life, you have to give first before people will want to give to you. If you want others to help you promote your submissions, take time to support theirs. Vote for theirs. Comment on theirs. Favourite and share theirs. If you have not already figured out that this is the number one rule in networking, in personal relationships, in community involvement, in office politics, in…in…everything social (including social bookmarking), please retreat from the human race for a while until you figure it out.

2. LEARN THE TERRITORY. There is no list of golden rules that applies to every social bookmarking website. Each one is its own community and just as any two neighbourhoods are different, every two congregations are different and every two workplaces are different, so too are every two social bookmarking communities. For instance, if you submit your own material on Digg or Reddit, expect the community to thump you, to be voted down as a dirty rotten spammer. But you are only trying to promote your website? Sorry, that’s not what the site is for and the community does not want to be marketed to. You will have to find other ways than submitting your own pages. Tipd and MMO Social Network encourage you to submit your own material, and so the community is built of many self-promoters. Go figure.

3. FOLLOW THE RULES. In addition to the unwritten rules – what the community will accept – there are some basic rules that distinguish various social bookmarking websites. Some are topical. Zoomit accepts only Canadian pages. Tipd accepts only financial pages. MMO Social Network accepts only online money-making pages, whereas Sphinn accepts only online marketing pages (careful…there is a lot of overlap between these two, but not completely). Other rules are process-specific.  TipBo accepts only tips and advice; don’t try submitting news or funny videos. Newsvine accepts only news stories; don’t try submitting tips or amusing photos. At Plime you risk losing your account just by submitting and content you have a self-interest in. Break these rules, and you are not only a dirty rotten spammer, but a dirty rotten former member.

4. SUBMIT QUALITY. Don’t submit everything you see or everything you write. Most people will grow tired of you and the fluff you submit and gloss right over your submissions. Pick the best to submit.

5.NO HOME PAGES. Don’t submit your home page. It’s like the cover of a magazine; you wouldn’t tell a friend to read the really cool magazine cover, but rather a really interesting magazine article. There are some social bookmarking websites where anything goes – so it pays to take the time to know the territory and the rules – but at most social bookmarking websites, a home page is not considered content.

6. SUBMIT FOR FRIENDS. This is a great way even to make friends – submit the content of other users. I find myself doing this at Tipd, reading a blog post of another Tipd member, liking it, and submitting it. It’s a great way to earn brownie points from others who will be happy to help promote your submissions, too.

7. BE LOYAL. One way to establish a strong network of friends who will vote for your submissions and even submit your material is to make sure to constantly watch for their submissions and vote for them/comment on them. This does NOT mean you have to vote for everything they submit, even if you disagree with it, but if you disagree with much of what they submit, perhaps they are not the right friends for you.

8. BE ACTIVE. The more active you are, the more you’ll be seen. The more you are seen, the more people will check out your submissions and the more votes you will get. Vote, but also take some time to comment.

9. COMMENT. Commenting make you stand out. Not everybody pays attention to who votes for what, but they do pay attention to comments you make. You don’t have to comment on every submission you vote for. I tend to comment when a) a thought occurs to me and I feel like speaking my mind, b) the submitter is someone whose attention I would like to capture or c) when I realize I have been less active of late. If the submission is the submitter’s own blog, leave a comment there, too. They will appreciate it. It’s OK to leave a dissenting opinion, just make sure to always be respectful and polite. Toilet mouths might attract attention, but not the kind you want.

10. CUSTOM AVATAR. Avatars are those little pictures of you or of some image that is the visual representation of your account. And the obvious golden rule that so many people overlook. A “default avatar” says “spammer” at worst, or simply fails to attract interest at best. When I scan submissions on a site, I look for topics of interest in the heading of each submission and I also watch for friends in the avatars. If you don’t have a custom avatar, chances are I won’t even see you.

Follow these rules and you have a good chance you’ll get some of you material to become “popular” at some of the better social bookmarking websites.

Author Information

David Leonhardt is a professional SEO consultant in Canada who provides a free social bookmarketing tool for bloggers and webmasters.

In addition, SU appeared to be going the way of Reddit—gamed and controlled by nasty people whose idea of free speech is to hurl invectives at other users. Cowards!

But I stayed on and have no regrets with my decision. I certainly don’t use SU as frequently as I once did, but I have also found that most of the cowardly users have now been contained. Life is good and, if a March 2010 StatCounter GlobalStats survey of top social media sites is accurate, then sticking with SU was a good decision on my part.

Yes, SU rocks your world if you use it: only Facebook outperforms it in sending traffic your way.

According to Stat Counter, Facebook is credited with racking up 48 percent of all social media hits, but SU is a strong second as it adds 25 percent to that mix. And Twitter? Not as important as some might think, generating just 10 percent of all hits. YouTube, Reddit, Digg and MySpace round out the next four spots, offering small amounts of traffic in comparison.

SU has never been a dud when it comes to social media—far from it. As recently as June 2009, SU was ahead of Facebook, but the world’s most popular social networking site soon soared while SU began to slip. Recent traffic reports reveal that Facebook has lost some of its steam while SU has recaptured what it had lost, but in all likelihood it will remain Facebook first, StumbleUpon second, with everyone else a distant third or beyond.

One of my chief reasons for staying with SU is that I was connected with so many people through this service. As I contemplated dropping SU, I realized that I would be saying good-bye to a significant number of people I followed and who followed me.

There really wasn’t a reasonable alternative: I don’t use Facebook all that much and Twitter just doesn’t offer the scale of the others. Besides, my traffic stats continued to rise thanks to SU interaction, bringing visitors and new customers my way.

Every social media/networking site has its benefits and faults but Facebook, with more than 400 million users and StumbleUpon, with its nifty bookmarking arrangement, capture more than two-thirds of all social media hits.

Looks like I’ll have to rethink my Facebook strategy next!

Giving TweetMeme A Try

That being said, I’ve gotten to like one I found recently — TweetMeme — which works with Twitter. Specifically, it allows you to tweet or retweet a blog article by clicking on a Digg like icon you can place at the beginning of your article, at the end of your article or in both places.

You can choose the normal sized widget or select a compact widget, both will immediately retweet the article when clicked on provided you have an account with Twitter (or the person who clicks the widget has one if they do the tweeting).  Moreover, you can display the button on pages as well as posts, even on your feed which can be a great way for your readers to retweet your information.

Play Around With The Settings

You can design the button to float left or right and tweak the settings between a post and the button itself. Finally, you can either use your name as the source for the tweeting or tweet your pages with @tweetmeme as your source. The easy to use control panel makes setting up a breeze, no coding needs to be entered into various php files.

Because this plugin is from TweetMeme, you can also find your tweets featured on their site, by category. Get a boatload of tweets and you could have a front page appearance, much like Digg. TweetMeme, in fact, tracks the most popular tweets on Twitter, updating every five minutes.

Digg Is So Yesterday

Speaking of Digg, I’m so done with that service. Unless your far left radical or conspiracy theorist, your stuff generally won’t get dugg without much cooperation from like-minded people. Twitter on the other hand seems to be visited by people who actually make a living during their waking hours and includes people from a broad spectrum of society. Sure, you can follow whomever you want, but you can also avoid the problem children unlike with Digg.

So if you want to give TweetMeme a try to see how it works, why not retweet this article while you are at it? Or, find something else here to retweet and then download the plugin to see if it suits your needs.

Winning With Twitter

Twittering (or should I say tweeting) is an interesting activity, especially if you like to write compelling, pithy headlines and include a URL with what you have to say. That can give an important edge to the professional writer who is used to coming up with killer headlines, but I don’t see Twitter being all that limiting for anyone other than the overt spammer.

It seems to me that all you have to do is share something of semi-value with your followers and, if your devotees are so inclined, they’ll retweet your tweets again and again. Of course, your pool of followers has to be rabidly interested in you and/or your topic, but “pitiful” me with scarcely 400 followers has seen a nice return on just one or two retweets as well.

Winning With StumbleUpon

SU remains a burly beast, an animal that attracts many other social media pros whose names are familiar to you.  Lyndon Antcliff, Chris Garrett, Tim Nash and Shana Albert are just a handful of active people on SU, individuals I long ago “friended” and still share stumbles with. However, to even things out a bit, I’m much more likely of late to visit the “What’s New” tab and find the latest finds, pull those up and leave a stumble.

A key point: I almost always leave a comment as a comment/stumble is better than leaving a stumble alone.  Please consider doing the same for the pages you choose to stumble…it’ll slow down your stumbling, but you’ll build up a reputation for being someone who leaves thoughtful and related comments behind. Trust me on this one, please.

The Rest of the Pack

I’m no longer active with Digg and I’m very careful with Reddit. Both sites seem to have been over run by a cohort of far-left wing devotees which is okay for them, but not so for everyone else.  If you post anything that even hints of opposition to the Digg or Reddit mindset you can expect your work to be buried in no time. They also turn on their own — I’ve read quite a few accounts where even the most ardent digger has been kicked to the curb by fellow diggers or by Digg itself.

Just the other day I had to plead with Reddit to restore my account — seems that my new ‘autotrends’ category offended someone. Gee, what’s so offensive about discussing the auto industry and new cars? Reddit did restore my account, but I’m expecting to be attacked again so I’ll keep my work focused on Twitter and StumbleUpon. That’s right, I quit!

Staying Laser Focused With Social Media

Of course there is a downside to social media and that drawback is spending too much time on it instead of doing actual work that makes money for yourself. Yes, I do tabbed browsing which means I’ll complete some work and then head over to Twitter and SU to see what’s up. I give myself a set amount of time to tweet or stumble, then its back to what I was doing.

Am I always so disciplined? No, but I avoid doing consecutive hours of socializing and with warmer weather here I’m much more inclined to log off, push in my chair and head outside for some refreshing exercise.

Thankfully, I don’t have a Blackberry or iPhone yet, otherwise I might be tempted to take my social media habit with me!

Related Reading: Amusing Myself With Twitter

That first occurrence was within an article I titled, How I Found You Online, where I marveled at the different ways I discovered people via the internet. At that time, I relied a lot more on forums such as Digital Point and Sitepoint as well as social media sites including BUMPzee, MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog to connect with people. Back then, I was a new user on StumbleUpon and was still stopping in on MySpace on occasion.

But it was my last comment that brought a smile to my face, particularly my comment about Twitter:

I plan on joining LinkedIn eventually, but I think I’ll sit Twitter out.

Yes, it just took me just seven words to explain that I wasn’t planning on using Twitter, likely for the reason that I saw no point in using it.  After all, Twitter was only a silly way for people to send one liners to each other all day, right? Who had the time for such nonsense?

Well, things certainly do change in the world of social media as I am basically forum free these days, choosing to meet up with people through their respective blogs and key social media sites. Yes, I even connect with a handful of people through email, but if you’re looking to IM me, that won’t happen — but feel free to send me a tweet!

It must have been an article I read, such as Mihaela Lica’s very first article on Sitepoint titled, “Twitter’s Little Known SEO Value,” that piqued my interest in Twitter. I’ve been following “Michi’s” writings for several years now and her candid explanation of Twitter caused me to revisit the site, digging a bit deeper to see what it is all about.

I joined Twitter long ago, have posted a bunch of links in the in the interim, but my network wasn’t much to brag about. But, this past week I invited a number of people to connect with me via Twitter, tripling my contacts and putting some life in my exchanges with other members. That move brought in a number of high end users, professional tweeters who add interesting stuff and make Twitter worthwhile.

Sure, there are some people who seem to be having conversations with nobody but themselves, but I’ve also come across a handful of really good articles that I probably wouldn’t have found had I not started using Twitter. In those cases I’ve read the article, posted a comment and, in a few situations, shared that information with someone else.

Mihaela’s article is a good read, making no silly promises that Twitter will do something that it won’t. But it was her last statement that I found most interesting (and true) — If you can make people come to your site via Twitter, then this is an SEO advantage you cannot afford to miss. – something I am taking into consideration as I tweet may around the site.

Oh, by the way, if you want to follow me on Twitter please click on the little tweety bird and you’ll be brought to my profile page for a connection.

A. There are a number of things you can do to help your StumbleUpon traffic improve, though I cannot say for certain if you will reach the levels of traffic you are accustomed to.

That being said here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Submit only on occasion to SU (once weekly, perhaps twice per domain), preferably having someone discover and stumble the article for you. Follow up with your own stumble if you like.

• Change the people whom you ask to stumble on your behalf. If SU catches you forming a “band” of stumblers, you’ll see diminishing returns.

• I don’t usually get that much traffic with Digg, Reddit and Mixx. SU rules!

• Comment on other blogs — good, relevant comments in order to get the owner’s approval. Place your article’s URL where the URL is featured after your name and email address.

• Spend some time stumbling daily. I like to click on my friends favorites and run through 50 to 100 at a time. When you stumble, people stumble back and the traffic begins to flow. Leave related comments from time to time; add discoveries too.

As always, good solid content will help drive people to your site, whether you plan to rely on social media traffic or not. When writing articles, don’t forget to cite other people’s work and embed a link back to their article.

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for two years now and have seen my traffic numbers fluctuate dramatically. I don’t rely on SU alone, but it does remain an important source for helping bring traffic my way.

Yes, now you can submit and syndicate your best work and, in Yahoo! Buzz’s case, you could become fortunate enough to find your article on the homepage of Yahoo!. If you get buzzed enough by other voters, your article title and summary (even a related photograph) could appear on the Buzz home page. Seeing that as few as five votes can push an article up, I’m sure that many Digg devotees will be making the mad dash over to Buzz. What’s up with that, Kevin Rose?

I can hardly wait.

Of course, if you don’t have a Yahoo! account, you’ll have to sign up first before you can use Buzz. You probably already have one especially if you’re a MyBlogLog fan or a casual user of some other Yahoo! program. This means that you have a Yahoo! email account, so head over there to retrieve your log in information.

Three Reasons Why You Should Buzz

Yahoo! gives three reasons why you should partner with them to distribute news:

1. Yahoo! Buzz welcomes ALL publishers, from large websites to niche bloggers.
2. We feature all types of content, from entertainment to business.
3. Yahoo! Buzz is currently focused on the U.S. audience.

The third reason benefits those of us in US, but is a real bummer for everyone else. I have no idea if this means that if you’re in Canada, the UK, or any other country besides the United States that you will not be receiving an invite. I’m supposing that Buzz will eventually expand but I cannot say so with certainty.

More Buttons To Paste All Over

Like Digg, you can paste buttons with your articles to draw attention to your readers that you would like to have your page buzzed. Simple coding will bring people to Buzz but you can make it easier on them by employing advanced button options whereby the article’s headline, summary, category, and URL are added, making it easier for people to buzz you. It’ll take a little extra work to get this done, but it may result in your article getting lots of attention — perhaps millions of visitors according to Yahoo!

Prepare to have your servers crash, ladies and gentlemen!

Sphinn, the Digg-like internet marketing news and discussion forum, is one site that everyone even remotely interested in online marketing should acquaint themselves with. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to benefit from Sphinn, in fact I have found the site to be full of great articles that can help anyone who wants to maximize their impact online — sort of like an online tutorial where you can glean vital information from many of the articles featured.

Sphinn, Search Engine People, Danny Sullivan, and Third Door Media

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how Sphinn came about, there are two names you’ll want to remember: Danny Sullivan, who is the content manager for Third Door Media, and Search Engine Land, which is probably the most well known of the Third Door Media brands. The company registered Sphinn.com in April 2007 and launched it soon thereafter.  Almost overnight, Sphinn has become the site where nearly all of the movers and shakers in the SEO/SEM world congregate — which is the purpose of Sphinn fulfilled.

Unlike Digg, Sphinn has a much more community feel to it, a level of professionalism not apparent on Digg. Certainly, there are those who post articles simply to benefit themselves, but then we’re talking about marketing and that shouldn’t be a surprise, nor is that wrong.

A Level Of Professionalism Not Found On Digg

What really separates Sphinn from the pack is that the participants are careful to only select (Sphinn It!) articles that meet their approval. Though there aren’t official gatekeepers to Sphinn, you aren’t likely to find 20 people who would be willing to click on your poorly written article for no reason — the all-important threshold to push your article into “hot” territory and linked under Sphinn’s “Hot Topic” tab (Hot Topic is the default home page for Sphinn too).

How To Use Sphinn As Your SEO Tutorial

Now for the main reason for this article: Sphinn can teach you many things about online marketing thanks to the high quality of contributions made to the site. Specifically, if you want to learn more about how three major search engines work — Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft — and how to maximize search, search marketing, social media, and online marketing, then Sphinn has that information neatly categorized for you.

Of course, given Sphinn’s democratic nature it is still possible to read an article that isn’t entirely accurate or contains some information that is absolutely incorrect. Thanks to a commenting system provided with each article excerpt, you can read what others have to say about the article and usually find those challenges prominently listed. One way to avoid uncertainty about content quality is to restrict your research to the site’s “Greatest Hits” tabs to find those articles which have received the most approvals. Of course, there are a handful of articles (including the all time most “sphunn” article) that are just for the fun of it, but the instructional (tutorial) articles seem to rise to the top as well.

Among the top reads on Sphinn are:

Sphinn – The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using: Written by Seomoz CEO and cofounder, Rand Fishkin, the article lists ten reasons why you should use Sphinn, especially if you are an internet marketer.

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes — Matt McGee wrote this article, but Tamar Weinberg “sphinned” it. No matter, both people are reliable and trusted authorities in the SEO community. This article makes for a good primer on how to make your site SEO-friendly, offering tips any webmaster should follow.

Yes, Virginia, Google Will Hurt Your Site For Selling Links — Danny Sullivan himself was one of the first to spot the crackdown Google made when it began punishing link sellers in 2007. Lest you be tempted to take up this practice in 2008, you may want to read what Sullivan has to say about it. The penalties Google is dispensing are still far reaching, including complete loss of PageRank.

The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t — It is easy to overlook the little things, especially when it comes to promoting your site. We often think of that wonderful backlink we got when our article was mentioned by an internet guru like Jeff Quipp or from Marty Weintraub, excellent sources in their own right, but not having an XML Sitemap in place, skipping press releases, and not taking advantage of MySpace and Facebook, are some of the smaller tasks which when added together can have an even greater (and adverse) impact on your site.

No, Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming — Again, Danny Sullivan weighs in on an important issue — advanced SEO. Sullivan discusses the highlights from this year’s SMX Advanced conference and comes to the conclusion that there is a lot of misinformation about which advanced SEO techniques are legitimate while covering those Blackhat methods that can land the site owner in trouble.

Link Building Secrets Revealed — Dazzlin’ Donna found Stoney G. DeGeyter’s article about link building and sphinned it for all of the SEO world to read. What Stoney did was to interview some of the top minds in the SEO world asking them to share one of their top link building secrets. Contributors included Hamlet Batista, Peter da Vanzo, Jim Boykin, Deborah Mastaler, and Bob Gladstein. 11 highly respected people sharing valuable tips you’ll want to study!

Regular Sphinn Visits, Recommended

To get the most out of Sphinn, I recommend the following:

Visit the site on a regular basis. Even if you don’t have anything relevant to contribute article wise, you’ll want to get a feel for how the community operates.

Read, review, and bookmark. Sometimes the information on Sphinn can get overwhelming. Other times it seems that everyone is talking about the same topic. While discussing link building practices can be beneficial, I like to look for something original and I don’t always depend on the most notable names to provide that information for me. If you like an article, make sure you Sphinn It! — you have to register in order to do that. Lastly, bookmark your favorite reads and why not reward the author by stumbling or digging the page too?

Snag a Feed — If you don’t have time to visit Sphinn regularly, why not add one or more feeds to your feed reader? I subscribe to their “Hot Topics” and “New Topics” feeds and there is also a comment feed you can choose. Additional feeds are in the works including a nifty All In One Super Feedmaker which might be worth using when it becomes available.

That’s it! My primer on Sphinn and why you should use it. Spend a few hours a week gleaning information from the articles submitted and you’ll be the wiser for it. I’ve cross paths with many wonderful folks on Sphinn, professionals in every sense of the word, people who willingly impart their knowledge and can point you in the right direction.

Should Digg fear Yahoo’s foray into their territory? Right now, the answer is clearly no, but that may soon change, especially when the tool exits beta. Please read on for a first look at Yahoo Buzz to learn what you can expect to see right now as well as down the road.

Yes, Yahoo Buzz is in beta which means that it barely registers in the world of diggable sites. But, with the power of Yahoo! behind it, it won’t take long before everyone hears about Buzz, signs up, and waits for the opportunity to submit their pages.

Initially, just 100 publishers are being allowed to Buzz, therefore if you haven’t received an invitation from Yahoo! yet, don’t hold your breath. Eventually, the Big Y! plans on opening up the site to all interested publishers, but we don’t know when that will happen.

Those publishers who are currently participating are given an online badge which allows readers to vote/submit sites to Buzz. Blogs, photos, stories and the like can be submitted and buzz is generated as votes are cast. A Buzz Score is assigned to every submission, a score determined by search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.

One of the biggest benefits however, is that Yahoo! promises to feature some of the top buzzed material on the home page of their site — clearly, if you write great material, are planning to submit to Buzz, and you have shared hosting, you may want to upgrade your plan before you participate!

Critics of Buzz say it doesn’t incorporate all of the features of Digg including third-party applications or tools to help determine how a story became popular. Still, with Yahoo’s backing I don’t think anyone looking for web traffic will be complaining and I know that when the invite is sent out, I’ll be signing up.

Interested in signing up with Yahoo Buzz? Visit this link to get included. 

All right, there are people who understand this whole social networking thing better than I do. When it comes to building online contacts, I rank as a novice in the eyes of some.

On the other hand, I have figured out how to work a handful of internet tools to my advantage!

I’m not about to give all of my secrets away — you’ll have to read Dosh Dosh blog’s for his latest social media marketing tips. What I will share with you is some quick pointers on how you can build your relationship with other social network pros without turning them off.

The following is my list of 7 tips (or habits) of social networking:

1. Sign up and get a feel for the network: The New York State Lottery uses a tagline, you gotta be in it to win it. The same holds true for socializing online — you need to join several networks in order to reap the benefits. No one wins the lottery without buying a ticket, in the case of social networks your ticket is free. And, unlike the lottery, all users are winners!

2. Do not be a N00B: Everyone has to start somewhere, but if you come across as a newbie, then you’ll likely be ignored. Worse, people will think that you are a pain in the rear quarters. Read up on that network, google a search for related articles, and experiment. Do not expect someone to take you under their wing — they’re too busy working the network.

3. Be consistent: Joining a network and not participating on a regular basis will reduce the chances that your articles will get stumbled, your blog posts read, and your contacts will not consider you a serious player. Although I belong to several networks, StumbleUpon is my favorite, with Sphinn, MyBlogLog, and BlogCatalog in the mix.

4. Ask and you shall receive: If you want an article stumbled, then ask. However, ask only on occasion and be prepared to return the favor when asked. People are busy managing a wide variety of tasks every day — don’t consume their time with wasteful stuff!

5. Ask specifically, do not be greedy: Nothing frosts me more then when someone asks me to stumble their post and then follows up with a secondary request to leave a message on their blog. Sometimes I leave comments with my stumble, sometimes I do not. I will leave a message on a blog if time permits and if I have something worthy to add. Give me one request and I may follow up with a bonus if I am in the mood.

6. Build up your silent network of social network pros: There are a handful of people I contact from time to time to ask for a stumble, a sphinn, or a digg. I will never publicly reveal who my contacts are and I certainly do not want everyone to know that I am good for a stumble (okay, I am!)

7. Give, expecting nothing in return: This is a hard one for some people — stumbling, digging, and leaving comments behind unilaterally. True, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine is the prevalent theme of social networking, but why not set yourself apart and simply pay it forward for somebody?

How Popular Do You Want To Be?

For some people, dominating a particular social network is their way of measuring their online success. Personally, I am not so much interested in building friends (I’m maxed out on StumbleUpon), rather in sharing stumble juice, the digg effect, sphinning, etc. Operating just below the radar has its advantages, namely you won’t get every Tom, Dick, and Harriet begging for your help.

Social networking is constantly changing so keep up with the changes and you’ll be fine. If too much of your time is being consumed “building relationships online” then maybe it is time to shut down the computer and go out and seek some human contact.