Last.fm is the first “social” site I joined, if you don’t count various subject-specific forums. The basic idea is that you download a piece of software that keeps track of what music you listen to and submits it to Last.fm where it’s compiled into charts for you and other people to browse through. Here’s where the social aspect comes in, though: Last.fm builds up a profile of the kinds of music you like, and displays a list of people with similar tastes.

There’s also the ability to add friends, and to recommend music to the people on your friends list if there’s something you’re just dying to share with them. People are also able to listen in on your personal music station – built up by taking your music profile and playing stuff that the system thinks you will like. You can even put in the name of a group or artist you enjoy and it’ll come up with similar tunes for you to try out.

While Last.fm is pretty specific to music, it has some great social features. The latest and greatest addition has been the facility to play full-length tracks completely free. You won’t find every single artist in the catalogue, but there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find at least some of your favourites available for you to listen a long to.

If you want to check out my taste, my Last.fm profile is here.

Stumbleupon! Channel-hopping for the internet generation! Sign up, tell the system what kinds of sites you’re interested in, download the toolbar, and hit “Stumble”. This one is dangerous! Honestly, it’s very good at serving up sites that fit your interest groups, and many a time I’ve sat at the computer longer than expected saying, “Just one more stumble”. If you find a site you particularly like, you give it the thumbs-up… while if you find one you don’t, you give it the thumbs-down. Stumble uses your responses to work out even more exactly what you do and don’t want to see online.

Where I find this comes into its own is when you’ve added a few friends to your profile, because you can stumble the sites that your friends have given the thumbs-up to. Assuming your friends are of a similar mind to you, you can have great fun browsing through their recommendations.

You can also review other users, which I admit I’ve never really got the point of. I think it’s to do with the fact that people can become your fans if they like the kind of sites you recommend… so I guess it’s like reviewing your favourite author or band.

Anyway, Stumbleupon. Very addictive, and a great way to discover new sites. And also a great way to drive traffic to your own site!

My Stumbleupon page is here.

Facebook is, I have to admit, the site that I find most addictive. I’m trying (emphasis on trying) to avoid Facebook over Lent because I was spending so much time on there. So what does it do?

Like many sites, you can have a list of your friends, your interests, where you work, messages, photos, post links… the list could go on forever! This is one seriously well-featured website. On top of the core features (which are extensive), third-party developers can add applications that let you play games, race people and “buy” cars, track who’s friends with your friends… again, the list could go on forever and new applications are being added all the time. The addiction for me started out with seeing how many friends I could get on my list (I’ve been pretty strict up to now about only adding people I actually know), but then changed to the various games that were on offer… Attack (a Risk clone) and Petrolhead (racing and car purchasing) being the ones that caught my attention for longest.

My profile is here, but I have no idea what happens if you try to get into it and you aren’t already on my friends list. So here’s the alternative: search for “Chris Hinton” if you want to get in touch. I’m the one with the photo you see on the left.

Feel free to get in touch and say “Hello”, challenge me to a game, send me a gift… whatever takes your fancy, really :)

I resisted twitter for quite a while, because I didn’t see the point. No, seriously, “What’s the point of telling everyone I’m going for a coffee, or typing, or doing some other dull component of my day?”, I said, having to take a deep breath at the end of the sentence. And if it weren’t for my co-author headphonaught, I wouldn’t have bothered with it at all. But I set up a page to play around with, and suddenly I’m telling the world every time I sit down to work or go anywhere.

Thing is, I have no idea why I’m doing it. It’s kind of the internet equivalent of small-talk:
“So, what are you up to later?”
“Getting my nostrils waxed, why do you ask?”
“No reason, just curious”.

I think I’ve still to discover the true networking and community potential of twitter, but so far it’s a fun site that’s helping me keep up to date with what my friends are up to. Oh, and a few other people I’ve never met but have ended up net-stalking!

My twitter page is here – send me a message!

Finally, friendfeed. I only found out about friendfeed about a week ago. This is a dual-natured site. I mostly use it for aggregating all my social site stuff into one place, so that rather than having to go round several sites, net-stalkers can just visit one page and see what I’ve been up to :)

The other site of friendfeed is that you can subscribe to others’ feeds too, and see what they’ve been posting. So as well as making things easier on your stalkers, you can easily stalk others! I like friendfeed for both aspects… it’s a one-stop place for me to see what my online presence looks like, and for me to check out what my friends have been up to.

You can find my friendfeed page here.

So these are the five social sites I use the most. Del.icio.us would have made the list if I weren’t suffering from a problem with my home network setup that’s stopping me accessing it (but trust me, if it weren’t for that I would still be bookmarking stuff through their site!). Feel free to add me as a friend or contact on any of these sites. Say, “Hello”… send a message… whatever. Remember to mention you found me through Geek-Speak so I know you’re not just some random trying to sell me viagra!