A Map of My Online Networking Tools: Part 1

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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Comments

[omar]

Another tool worth checking out is <a href="http://comapping.com">comapping.com</a>.

[omar]

sorry - www.comapping.com

[Uno de Waal]

Wow, this is a really good idea to manage your online identity. I'm sure there's a gap in the market for a product like this - something that visualises your identity and will grow it organically.

At the moment <a href="http://www.unodewaal.com/about-uno-de-waal">I'm using RSS and buttons</a>to show what I'm interested in and where my thoughts are going, but this could be pretty cool to visualise your Identity 2.0 even better.

[Dennis D. McDonald]

Uno-

Your URL was garbled. Here is the correct one:

http://www.unodewaal.com/about-uno-de-waal

- Dennis

[Uno de Waal]

doh! thanks for that Dennis.

[W. David Stephenson]

That's really neat, Dennis. I'll try to blog this page soon!

[Dennis D. McDonald]

I was finally able to get the Pownce folks to delete my membership a couple of days ago. There was no straightforward way to do it myself and it took three emails to customer support to accomplish the task.I'll update the map soon to reflect this.

[Dennis D. McDonald]

I received an email from MindMeister today saying they have implemented an offline editing feature using "Google Gears" technology. I'll check it out and report back.