Networking Tools – JerseySmarts.com

About two or three months ago I reviewed my network links on JerseySmarts.com. For those of you who might be wondering, a network link is a link or button that I place on this blog to show that we are listed in a certain network. For example, look at the bottom of the right sidebar and you’ll see TopBlogArea, Blogged, Blog Catalog, etc. Those are links to the different networks where I’ve listed JerseySmarts.com. And even though it looks like there are a good number of links and buttons over there right now, believe it or not – there used to be a lot more.

I took my blog off of a bunch of the networks for a bunch of reasons and I happened to keep a log of those reasons for those of you who are involved with blogs or who might have similar decisions to make.

BlogExplosion – Gone. The interface was not user friendly and I couldn’t figure out what benefit I was getting for being listed.

TopBlogArea – Updated the code. Since I updated the code, however, I rarely get ranked in the Top 100 sites in my category. I think they moved my site to somewhere new in their system. If I can’t fix this, I’ll probably just get rid of this link, too.

BlogCatalog – Updated the code.

BlogTopSites – Updated the code.

BlogHub – Gone. The user interface for this site was too simple and didn’t provide enough information about how I could integrate my blog with their services.

SpamPoison – Updated the code. I love this little button because it takes the spam bots and hurls them into a cycle where they, essentially, spam themselves. Serves them right!

Blogged – Updated the code. By far the best user interface, but extremely slow. These guys are linked up with Facebook, so that’s a benefit, too.

LoadedWeb – Updated the code. This is the easiest network to join and manage. I recommend it.

Truth Laid Bear – Gone. The user interface is excruciatingly slow. I initially updated the code, but ultimately removed it because of the slowness of the site.

BlogAnnounce – Gone. They wanted to try to get payments from the blog publishers or something like that…ha! Yeah right.

Anyway, I hope that some of the webmasters that float by JerseySmarts.com find this information useful.

As a fierce defender of the American worker I admire those in the working world who are older than I am and constantly try to improve their skills to maintain their relevancy in an increasingly younger workforce. Older co-workers generally have excellent learning experiences to teach younger workers and – at least in the case of technology – vice versa.

Over the last few days I’ve been electronically accosted by a former associate who is more than two decades older than I am. This hasn’t been a malicious attack, rather it is simply this person finally figuring out how to use MySpace among other online social networking tools. Since they’ve figured out how these things work, I now have the joy of being e-mailed with “Join Facebook!” e-mails on all of my e-mail accounts. Like I really need someone to tell me that I should join LinkedIn again. I’m already on these friggin’ things! Lay off!

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that if you’re not accustomed to how these social networking sites work, then here’s the deal. If you send a friend an invite to join a social networking site – one invite is enough. Chances are that they are already on one of the big three (MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn). They don’t need you sending them invites to these things over and over again at a variety of e-mail addresses. Just relax and be normal!