My favourite five social mee-jar

Now I have never seen myself as particularly 'techy'. Sure I can operate an iPod and a DVD player. I have my own blog and occasionally (although not always successfully) dabble in HTML.
You see having a blog instantly signs you up to an exclusive club where we all think we are fairly 'cutting edge', or at least we wish to receive recognition for embracing the new possibilities for communications, that the Internet and new technology sends us, or bloggers just want to have a bigger platform for conversation and reflection of these relations we call public. but I propose that really it is about exploration. Our need to discover.

You see, to seek out new things is something that we all do and it is this appetite for the new and shiny that lead us to blogging long before the vast majority. We like to try new things out; metaphorically stand in front of the mirror with them and see if they fit.

But how does this link with my 'techy'ness? Well I was tagged with this latest meme first by Stephen, and then by Simon. Like many things I read from both of these guys it had me pondering, this time (as I was meant to) on what I use social-media-wise.

Initially I couldn't think of anything. Nope, nothing at all. Does Yahoo fit? Could I use (as Simon did) Google? Would I be shunned by other bloggers for my lack of knowledge?

But then I calmed down and began to think logically, and discovered that actually I do have experience with much of this new 'social media'. In the same way that my appetite for discovery had led me to blogging in the first place, I have also flirted with many different online tools. In my blogging enthusiasm, every time I read about some new tool I like to sign up and try it out. (As long as it is free of course.)

The key thing is that I do not use any of them particularly regularly - but I am signed up to possibly the majority of them. So here are five of the social media that I am signed onto and I reckon I use possibly more than the others...

Technorati - I mentioned this before. You can see who is linking to you and search the blogosphere for various tags. As far as seeing who is linking to you it is always nice for a little ego boost on days when you feel all alone on the information superhighway. Or you can check out how many link to other sites, if you want. I actually don't use this all the time but I like to check in once or twice a week.

YouTube - I love this! It is an excellent way of wasting so much time. You can watch the latest trailers and music videos. Strangly addictive, I probably find myself on YouTube every couple of days.

The 'new PR' wiki (Crispy News) - This has been a recent discovery for me. On one hand I can just go there and read what blog posts have been voted as the most interesting, informative or just plain amusing PR posts on the web. I have uploaded two articles (the first one was my own as way of an way of seeing exactly how 'New PR' worked.

Blogger - although I have occasional issues with Blogger, I cannot fault all the good work that its doing; helping so many people set up their own blogs in a (very) cheap and simple way. And I reckon I use it at least twice a day, just checking things and messing about.

Now what for the last one?...

So many choices. Should I go with Frappr? or perhaps MySpace (although I have slagged it off I still guiltily return to check out various sites)? Maybe Del.icio.us? Actually no, not Del.icio.us. I'm still getting to grips with it and so I can't really lie and say I use it all the time.

So I am going to go with:

Podcasts - just great. I have recently been so inspired by other PR podcasts that I have even began experimenting with the medium myself. As we say in South London - Nuff said.

So on to the tagging:

I would be interested in hearing what Owen, Ed, Richard, Chloe and Sam have discovered.