Thing 21 - Other Social Networks

It seems there are social networking groups for all interests and tastes. Are people spending more and more time online and less and less time in relationships with (gasp!) other actual people? Or are the social networks a way of connecting far-flung people with similar interests who may not know any "real" people with those interests? Do they lessen people's loneliness?

I joined the 23 Things Ning group, uploaded a photo, left a comment, explored around on this group, a couple other groups and a few other social networks. Lots of interesting things and lots of groups where you really need to spend some serious time in order to figure out their best use. I think of the Ning groups, I liked the MPR ones - Minnesota Readers and Minnesota Life - the best. 

I thought the WebJunction article on building social networks at your library was very interesting. And it had a couple links that I followed - a discussion board on how to create a social library led to a blog that listed that blogger's choices for the top Web 2.0 tools. So I found a new list of tools to explore and a tech-related blog to follow.