Too many social networks to "twitter" to? Try this new service, Ping.fm

I post blurbs about my writings, columns and morning radio show to about 20 social networks. Each social network has a different constituency. Some overlap but I have to reach them all in order to push readership of my syndicated columns and audience interest in my morning radio show. It's the new journalism, folks.

The social media isn't merely about reconnecting with classmates, former girlfriends or wives, but also people who want to follow your activities and efforts. And, if you are a writer and media host, like I am, it's a mandatory necessity.

Until now, I was able to link my Twitter account to post my Tweets to both Twitter and Facebook. But then, I would have to go to the many other social networks where I have presence and repost to each, one at a time in order to reach the breadth and depth of my media audience.

That's changed, thanks to Ping.fm.

Ping.fm is a free online social networking time saver. I now post to Ping.fm what I might normally have posted laboriously one at a time to Twitter and then the 20 or so other social networking sites. Ping.fm allows me to link all of the sites and the one post now broadcasts out to all of them.

And, even more beneficial is the fact that Ping.fm will automatically take long links and compress them into shorter links with fewer characters allowing for more informational newsie text to go along with the link.

Now, one post to Ping.fm and all of the followers and friends and business pals get the message at the same time. I didn't have to change my Twitter feed to Facebook, though I could have. It might have been a little complicated to do. So instead of adding Facebook to the feed, I just post to Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, GoogleBuzz, Yahoo Profile and a bunch of them.

The response was almost immediate with higher traffic to the downloading of my podcasts from the radio show and higher hits on column postings.

Try it. It is definitely a great service.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Ning Network is Nang. The owners move from social networking to greed

Ning is no longer a free network that they once promised to be. Now that they have gotten a lot of support, they have decided to impose monthly fees (really ridiculous amounts, actually) in order to keep your network going. So all the 18 months of work I am my network of 36 journalism associates is not out the window.

No pay, no play.

Ning sucked. It was limiting. It boasted that if offered all these great options but they mostly don't work or never did what was promised. You can bring people together and create chat rooms and put your profile on the Ning Network. Wow. Big deal. You can even blog there, although the blog is not automatically indexed on any search engines like Google.

I can do all of that for Free on Facebook where I have 2200 friends who share my interests and read my many columns on Middle East peace, social networking media (like this blog) and on US politics, including in CHicago where politics and the retirement of Mayor Richard M. Daley has sent the Chicagoland region rocking.

So why would I pay to get far less from Ning?

Because they are not social networkers at all. They are geeks. And Geeks like to write fascinating programs that do fascinating things that THEY think normal people like to do but the fact is that because they are geeks, they are not normal people so they have no idea what a normal person needs in terms of a software program.

That's the failing of companies created by Geeks. They think they know and write all these press releases about what they know, but the truth is they know squat, which actually is probably more than what they know.

The best software programs and online systems are those written by Geeks who are directed by people's needs, not their bean-counting vision of what they think would be cool. Geek crap is not cool.

Ning is even less cool today.

Send the Ning Nang back to internet Sing Sing.

They suck

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

(distributed by the Hanania Media Network)