Ziff-Davis has really jumped on the social networking bandwagon. Last week it was eWeek’s coverage of social networking for the enterprise. PC Magazine has also recently covered blog tools, wiki tools, and web conferencing tools. This week, they’ve done an in-depth special feature on public social networks, including some success stories, analysis, and reviews of several sites:
– Friendster
– Friendzy
– LinkedIn
– Ryze
– Tribe.net
It’s obvious from the reviews that contributing editor Richard Dragan has spent some time on these sites, not just with their management. In the end, he concludes that the jury’s still out since most of them are still in beta mode, so you might as well try them all since they’re free. Sticking to the business-focused ones, here’s what he said in summary:
“There are some recommendations we can make. Executives should try LinkedIn. At best, it could be incredibly useful. At worst, the site guards your privacy and doesn’t waste your time. Ryze is a very strong site for business users of less exalted levels, and it’s a very mature product—the only one we reviewed that’s a full-release version.”
He does offer one additional crucial bit of advice:
“Be careful not to harangue all your friends to follow you to every site, or you may not be able to call them friends much longer.”
