Do you know what all of these are?

[sanantone]

I'll admit that I've used Twitter to chat with people in other states and countries. It's in real-time. I just lost interest in chatting with people.

[michaelfrye1970]

Imgur is just another place to post and comment on pictures. Mostly the ones where the same pictures are used with a different comment layered on the top.
Foursquare is a site where you check-in to places that your are currently at. By doing this the businesses give you coupons or some other extra. Just another way to get people to visit your location.

[LaceyLady]

I don't know what these social networking sites all are, either! Nor do I understand them or use them all. And I am not old at all, so age has nothing to do with it!

I do use Facebook, although joined relatively recently. I find it useful to keep in touch with people, especially family and friends far away (I don't have any family nearby except my immediate family), and friends that I don't get to see often. With everyone being so busy, it can be hard to regularly spend time with or individually contact friends. I also use FB to help facilitate meeting friends more often, using FB events, posts such as "who is going to...?", "anyone free to...", and staying updated about events and things happening in their lives. I found that friends would post about events, important news, and other things on FB, and not contact or email those not on FB, so when I didn't have a FB account, I would be out of the loop.

I have a LikedIn account, and think it will prove useful in the future, but have not really used it yet. I understand the purpose and advantage of it, but until I get connections, it is not very helpful. Since I haven't gotten a job or connections yet, I haven't utilized it.

I know about Twitter and have an account (mostly to try it out and reserve my name if I decide to use it), but don't use it. I currently see no purpose in my life to use Twitter, but can understand the purpose it can have, for posting and receiving quick updates (such as celebrities posting updates for fans, businesses for customers, colleges for students, etc.). My brother uses it, prefers it to Facebook, and it is popular among computer geeks (him and his friends). I cannot even understand the posts - very short and filled with characters like # and @.

Skype is useful for calls and messaging for free (or less than phone), especially long-distance and international. It is very useful when the rest of the family lives far away (most outside the US) and for friends that live far away, since long-distance and international phone calls are quite expensive. There are other similar services, but Skype is most well known, at least in the US.

YouTube is useful for posting and watching videos. The social media aspect is the ability to comment and "like" videos and "subscribe to" friends' channels. I do have a YouTube account to share videos with friends, especially sharing videos of dance performances with my students and their family/friends. I don't subscribe, comment or like/dislike, though.

Pinterest does have use to people who work in visual fields and appeals to others who like to collect ideas/inspiration related to their interests. People, like the hair stylist Burbuja mentioned, photographers, designers (fashion/wedding/home/etc.), and others can find Pinterest quite useful for their profession. I have a Pinterest account and use it to collect inspiration photos and ideas for my sewing designs, costumes, photography, and hairstyles all in one place, without needing to save photos onto my computer or bookmark many photos/pages. All the photos are organized into categories ("boards") so that I can easily find the ideas/inspiration for each. For historical fashion, for instance, it is helpful to gather photos of clothing from each time period onto boards, so that I can study many examples when creating a historical garment. I personally find Pinterest quite useful.

Wordpress is a website that hosts blogs and blog-style websites, as is Blogspot, Blogger, and others. Tumblr is a different blogging website, used for blogs generally consisting mostly of photos or sometimes videos. I don't use either, but I do occasionally (if I have free time) read informative blogs about things that interest me (mostly sewing/historical fashion and photography).

Instagram is a website to share photos, often with additions such as frames, filters, coloring, etc. I do not use Instagram or see a need for it.

I do not know about the others, although the replies to this thread are helping to educate me on them. I had heard of Reddit and Foursquare, but don't understand them, and had not heard of Imgur.

I think there are many redundant social networking sites providing the same or very similar services. We can identify one or a few sites that provide the services we want to use and just join them, and not be on many sites. If I want to share a photo, I can just post it on Facebook, why use Instagram or Imgur? If I want to share an update, why use Twitter or Google+ when I can just post on Facebook? Although I can understand a business wanting to spread advertising and reach as many people as possible who might only use certain sites and therefore posting on multiple sites.

Social media sites can be useful, but we always need to maintain balance and be careful when using them. I agree that spelling and grammar are often disregarded and therefore suffer, too much time can be used on these sites, and much of the information posted is trivial clutter. However, I do see the usefulness, and sometimes unavailability (such as when all updates for a group I am part of are only posted in a FB group) of these social networking sites in the digital age.

PS: Sorry for the long post!

[Lindagerr]

It sounds to me like you do know quite a bit about these sites even if you don't use them. I learned a lot just from reading your (not too long) post.

I agree about the balance in using social media sites, I do not use my real name on Facebook and I use a very old pic. My family and close friends know how to find me. I don't want everyone knowing because sometimes I am not comfortable with things my children (the two that have friended me) post and I don't want it out there for just anyone to see. I also use LinkedIn but I will not connect with my children there, I think of that as something that is just for business not really "social" networking.

I am glad I started this thread I am learning a lot.

[sanantone]

I don't know what these social networking sites all are, either! Nor do I understand them or use them all. And I am not old at all, so age has nothing to do with it!

You know a lot more than I do. It must be a sign that I'm getting old.

[Chebasaz]

I recognized/have used all of them, but it looks like most has been answered already. I'll jump in with the last two even though I'm late to the party

Reddit - Bills itself as the "Front page of the Internet" and in a lot of ways, it's true. It's a social media aggregation site (Think of it as user-driven news reporting). While the users do create original content themselves, Reddit's true power comes from those same users crawling all over the Internet and then posting interesting/funny/whatever stories they find on Reddit itself. It's sort of a clearinghouse of online information. Almost every cute story, picture, meme, etc you see posted on Facebook has come from Reddit. People see it somewhere on the Internet, repost it on Reddit, and then it spreads from there. What's even more scary, over the last year the large news organizations have learned of Reddit, so hardly a day goes by when I don't see something on the news that was posted on reddit a week prior or so. They've even started citing "Reddit User: PancakeSoul" as sources.

I've been surfing Reddit for a few years now, and it truly is great. They have a subreddit for almost everything (you can think of them as sub-forums if that makes it easier to understand). Here's a list of the more popular sub-reddits - Home | RedditList.com - Tracking the top 5000 subreddits Poke around and you'll probably come away with something interesting and educational.

Foursquare - Foursquare is one of those interesting things that popped up and just won't die. It started off as a social thing (Look at me! I just checked in to here! Come visit me!), but then seems to have moved more towards a Yelp/Review style of business. To be honest, I don't see it ever re-gaining the hold it once did. With Facebook allowing you to "Check In" now at locations, it's made Foursquare kind of superfluous. One thing Foursquare does have over Facebook is its search capability, so if you're looking for good food in New York City, it's easy to find with Foursquare. Of course there's always Yelp for that as well.....

Imgur - Just an image hosting website, but does it in a painless way. Imgur allows you to upload a picture and then gives you a TinyURL for that photo. It's become extremely popular due to Reddit using it as its preferred image hosting site. That's really all there is to it. Just a place to put your photo and share it with the Internet.

Also wanted to point out the difference between Wordpress/Tumbler - Both are blogging platforms, but WP (Wordpress) is hugely adaptable and very little of what you see out there comes from Wordpress itself. Instead, it allows developers to create themes (think of them as designs) and plugins/widgets (think of them as tools) to customize your blog.

Tumbler is more generic in form, but what I really like about it is that it allows you to "Tumble" a blog post. Before Wordpress jumped on the bandwagon, this was huge. It allowed you to "re-tweet" and entire blog post on your blog, which made the whole "Social sharing" much easier. WP is stomping the heck out of Tumbler now, primarily due to all the different customization for it, but you can still find plenty of Tumbler sites out there. If you're thinking of starting a blog, I'd go with WP.

[LaceyLady]

It sounds to me like you do know quite a bit about these sites even if you don't use them. I learned a lot just from reading your (not too long) post.

I agree about the balance in using social media sites, I do not use my real name on Facebook and I use a very old pic. My family and close friends know how to find me. I don't want everyone knowing because sometimes I am not comfortable with things my children (the two that have friended me) post and I don't want it out there for just anyone to see. I also use LinkedIn but I will not connect with my children there, I think of that as something that is just for business not really "social" networking.

I am glad I started this thread I am learning a lot.

You know a lot more than I do. It must be a sign that I'm getting old.

Linda and Sanantone, Ha Ha, Thanks! I hear about the various sites from friends and my brother, but only know about certain ones. I just wrote a lot about the sites I do know about or use! And even if I don't use or understand certain sites, I have come across ways that they can be useful to others, so I included that information.

I do use my real name on Facebook and all my accounts, but there are quite a few with the same name, and I generally don't have a public photo of me (although after the commencement ceremony, I think I will put a graduation photo as my profile pic), so I am not so easy to find unless someone knows me. I am very selective in accepting friend requests or connecting online with people. I am careful with what I post anywhere on the internet, but generally use either my real name or my pseudonym LaceyLady (if public postings, such as forums). The anonymity on the internet often breeds lack of accountability and carelessness and I would rather just be careful and responsible about what I post.

Justin, your post is very informative. It was good to read and learn the information about the sites I did not know about.

I agree Wordpress is much more adaptable, and in my opinion, better for a blog, unless someone just wanted a simple blog. There are many options for blogs similar to WP, such as Blogger, Blogspot, and Weebly, but I understand (from what others have said) that WP is generally preferable, due to the greater customization and the ability to use any domain without needing the hosting domain (ex: something.com instead of something.wordpress.com or somthing.blogspot.com).

(BTW, my brother is a computer geek, which is why I know about some computer/internet things, but my own knowledge is limited).