The Social Internet

1. Be careful with whom you connect - so you can keep the network personal. When someone you don’t know asks to connect with you, you should always email him/her and ask how you know each other, and why you should connect. If you don’t get an answer, then ignore the request. This way you can feel comfortable with writing a status message such as “Kfir is having a bad day” without feeling, well, bad.

2. Create groups in areas that are not saturated, and you can add value to the community

BUT

3. Don’t nag people in the group too much - this is Facebook, not Ning. Learn from Chris Brogan’s Grasshoppers experience.

4. Choose the applications you use carefully - don’t Myspace your Facebook profile. Check all the applications you find, but be very careful with the ones you keep on your profile.

5. Invite your friends only to useful or fun applications - and no, Zombie is not one of them

6. Constantly review the groups you are member of, and engage in the discussions there. Nothing new here - this is a social network, so, be social.

7. Try to be a member of up to 30 groups - so people can see what are your topics of interest.

8. Initiate discussion threads between your friends - but don’t spam them. This is a great way to create a conversation with your friends not only you are talking with people you like, you are also helping them to connect amongst themselves. Did we mention that this is a social network?

9. Make your profile interesting to read - Invest a lot of time in creating a profile that not only provides information but make people read it through. Applications like iRead, friends wheel, flixster, and wordpress plugin (if you have a blog) bring your profile to life.

10. The most important tip of all - use it as a part of your social media toolbox - mesh it up with your blog, create events that are relevant to your day to day live, share your posts and video material and so on. It is like a snowball effect - one effort feeds the other and increase the impact of your online and offline social activities.