As I’m working on my dissertation, I thought it would be productive to brainstorm all the social media services I’ve signed up for, going back over the last 14 years probably. I think the first one I ever signed up for was ICQ (for instant messaging) back in high school, though I imagine there were ones around that time that I’ve completely forgotten. Here’s my brainstormed list, with over 50 services. The categories are, of course, somewhat arbitrary and overlapping.
Instant Messaging: ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat
Video Chatting: Skype
Social Networking Sites: Facebook, MySpace, Diaspora, Ning, DList
Location-Based Services: Gowalla, FourSquare, Google Latitude
Events: Meetup.com, Evite
Reading Sites: Goodreads, Amazon.com
Social Bookmarking Sites: Delicious, Diigo, Google Reader
Dating or Hookup Services: Match.com, Adult Friend Finder, Manhunt, Gay.com, Adam4Adam, Grindr (iPhone app), Recon, SKOUT, theXchange, Loopt Mix
Music Sites: Last.fm
Video Sites: YouTube
Photo Services: Flickr, Google Picassa, TwitPic, Instragram, Plixi, Photobucket
Blogging Platforms: Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox
Microblogging: Twitter, Google Buzz
Document Management and Sharing: SugarSync, Dropbox, Google Docs
Presentation sharing: SlideShare, Scribd
Virtual Worlds: Second Life
This list ignores the various applications and devices used to access these services. For instance, I’ve access Twitter via their website, their desktop application, their iPhone and iPad apps, Brizzly’s website and iPhone app, and other iPhone apps like TweetDeck, Twitterific, Tweetcaster, and Echofon.
