There are way too many networking sites out there these days. Almost everyone and their mother (and some of their dogs) are on Friendster, so I won’t really go into detail about that service.
I will say that Friendster was the best one of these networking sites that I have used. I’m sure that we have all received emails from various friends/colleagues/ex-lovers to invite you to join the newest networking site where you can meet/greet/date/sleep with a friend of a friend (or, the more commonly acronym FOAF). We’ve all wondered if these things really work, are they just like collecting Pokemon?
You can decide for yourself… or at least influence a decision or two in the comments. Here are a few networking sites that I know of (feel free to add any that I missed):
- Friendster (duh)
- Ryze: Good for professional networking. Meet other professionals with similar interests!
- Tribe.net: I really like this one… as Xeni Jardin says, Tribe.net “seems to facilitate certain kinds of interaction (read: non-gonad-driven) more elegantly than some of the other services out there right now”.
- Everyone’s Connected: another “six degrees” kind of site, kinda crummy UI, but it does the job.
- LinkedIn: a very professional professional’s networking site. Good if you need a job, or need to fill a job.
- ecademy: another business networking site. I don’t know much about this one.
- Ringo: Not the beatle. The social networking site. Much like friendster.
Now, go forth and network to your heart’s content.