Facebook:

Facebook is by far the most popular social network, with over 400 million unique users. When you first join Facebook, you are able to set up a profile with as much or as little information about yourself as you’d like. Most of Facebook’s features involve interacting with your network in some way. You can send messages, post comments, play games, and even ‘like’ the activity of friends. The site tackles peer-to-peer networking almost flawlessly, allowing you to be in the know about classmates, friends, family and even businesses and causes. However, because anyone you are friends with can post text, videos, photos, and links to your profile at any time, the site is not expressly designed for professional networking. When job hunting, it is recommended to do an audit of your online presence. Would you hire yourself?

Twitter:

Twitter is a unique brand of social network known as a ‘micro-blog’. On Twitter, you are able to post text blogs of up to 140 characters at any time. People can then follow your blog, and every time you ‘tweet’, they are notified and can read your post. The site has a more niche audience than exhaustive social networks like Facebook, but Twitter does what it does very well. Although the 140 character limit may seem overly restrictive, it means that posts are short, sweet, and to the point, which is nice for college students that are always on the go. You can even have tweets sent directly to your phone so you can keep in touch from anywhere.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is far more focused on professional networking than social networks like Twitter and Facebook. At LinkedIn, you are able to mass professional contacts. These contacts can then be utilized to point you towards different business solutions. If you need to find an advertising agency for a new business project, LinkedIn contacts can help point you in the right direction. If you’re looking for investors for a business, LinkedIn is the way to go. LinkedIn is also a great way for college students to begin making business contacts, and developing professionally.

In the end, Facebook is by far the most exhaustive of the online networks, and for college students it is a must have tool. You are able to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues alike as well as following your favorite brands and causes. The ability to make specific content private (viewable only by the friends that you choose) also makes it easy to keep in touch with friends and professionals on the same network.

Which network do you think is most beneficial to college students?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 11:57 am and is filed under College Life, College News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.