Dennis D. McDonald (ddmcd@ddmcd.com) consults from Alexandria Virginia. His services include writing & research, proposal development, and project management.

By Dennis D. McDonald

I am experimenting with development of a simple graphical map of the online networking tools I use for personal and professional networking. I started this as a way to illustrate to people how different tools can be used and how their features differ.

You can see the current version below that I am maintaining using the MindMeister tool. This view reflects changes as they are made when I am logged into the application and I have "publish" turned on.

A couple of observations:

  • I have not yet attempted to show the "interaction" among the different tools, e.g., the way Twitter messages can be displayed within Facebook.
  • I've used icons to represent various "features" of the tools. The features I've tried to include so far are:
    • Can create sub groups
    • Can create & post content (of any type)
    • Can do person to person messaging (includes email)
    • Personal Use
    • Professional Use
    • Maintain Personal Profile
    • Not Openly Searchable (e.g., via a general Google search)

Are there any important features I've left out?

I've left some tools off. For example, I haven't entered "Second Life" in a long long time (I could never get my avatar to look the way I wanted) and I recently deleted my MySpace account.  I'm still trying to figure out how to delete my Pownce account, which just won't go away.
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A Map of My Online Networking Tools: Part 2

What department should manage a corporate "social networking" program for lead generation?