A few years ago, the idea of gathering online to meet people who shared your passions seemed weird, because, for one thing the conception was you’d only find other geeks online. But these days, more and more people from different demographics are going online through social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook - sites where people create their own profiles, add other users to their list of friends, and share photos. But lately, online social networking has taken another step and has been moving offline into the “real world,” with people using these sites in new ways to recruit businesses, employees and in some cases philanthropic donations.

In a very short time, social networking has been redefined beyond its initial scope of just being a way to keep in touch with family and friends. For one thing, legitimate news organizations are now keeping an eye on online social networks as they’ve become an alternative source for news. Some social networks are even consistently “outscooping” traditional media outlets when it comes to the latest news. The viral success of social networks speaks to the fact that social networking has become mainstream and that it’s no longer the domain of the geeks and the teenagers. It’s Ironic really, since a few years ago social networking was considered just another online fad.

One quick look at the recent social networking map and you’ll find sites that target different demographics, from sites like LinkedIn that focuses more on business networking to sites like Eons for the Baby Boomers. Recently we’ve seen the rise of small, niche-driven social networking sites that cater to such topics as pet ownership and cake baking. As for the bigger social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, there are interest groups that you can join to talk about your common interests. It’s interesting that, after building up to monstrous sizes, social networks are scaling down and focusing. Due to this fact, there is really something out there for everyone.

What’s really remarkable, however, is that these online social network connections are now moving offline, with people meeting their online ‘friends’ in the “real world.” With the prevalence of Tweetups (for Twitter-based friends) and sites like Meetup.com, we’re in the midst of watching the online world prove that it is an effective way to mobilize people who share interests to gather offline.

Let’s take me, for instance. I’m a big Star Wars fan, so when the prequel trilogy rolled in, I was interested to meet individuals who shared the same kind of passion that I have for Star Wars. To make a long story short, what started out as a small Yahoo! Group of Filipino Star Wars fans that I helped begin turned into the Philippines’ biggest, internationally-recognized, George Lucas-approved Star Wars fan group. We see from my example that online-based groups can and have gained real world clout (and yes, we do wear costumes to many real world events). With local, user-generated groups gaining international clout and credibility, it’s really not surprising to find companies now using what was once a “kid’s tool” as their new medium to spread the word about their products and/or services, or even to recruit more people into their fold.

The benefit isn’t only to the companies themselves, but also the employees of the companies. Due to social networks like LinkedIn, today’s business executives can now network online, and even use LinkedIn to check the background of their new contacts. In a way, LinkedIn, and its European counterpart, Xing, is becoming the business card of the internet.

Artists (particularly musicians) have also benefited significantly through the use of social networking since they now have a medium to let their work be heard, and hopefully, attract the attention of record executives. As a matter of fact, some music industry insiders are even calling this shift of focus “industry changing.” Gone are the days of playing in clubs, hoping to be seen by record executives, or shopping around for a record deal by giving away demo tapes. After all, why go through all that hassle when you can just create a profile on a social networking site like MySpace, upload some of your songs, promote your MySpace page at events, and let people stream your music from it? It’s faster and definitely more cost-effective for up-and-coming but still-penniless artists.

The biggest surprise to me is that non-profit groups have turned to social networking to raise awareness, and funds for their causes. If philanthropy gathers people behind different causes, then social networking is really the logical next step in the advancement of those causes. That way, it becomes a definite win-win situation for not only the non-profit organization and the donor, but of course, the beneficiaries.

Even with these examples of social networks affecting people in real ways, many critics of social network marketing base their argument on the ephemeral qualities of social networks and the fact that these social sites don’t “do anything”. Might this be an example of the old guard protecting its turf from the new wave? Those same critics will soon need new arguments.

Patrick Everett Tadeo is PandemicBlog’s eyes and ears in the Philippines and Asia. This is Patrick’s first post at PandemicBlog, subscribe to our feed to hear more from him.

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Let’s start out with some of the Facebook basics because if you’re part of the uninitiated, it’s likely that your account will be shut down.

Facebook has a special initiation…namely ‘follow our rules or die’.

If you don’t know how to use Facebook you need to be “in the know” before you get started in order to avoid any unpleasantness and hassles. This saves you a great deal of time both now and in the long run. Invest a little of your time now in discovering how to properly use Facebook so you avoid losing massive amounts of your time later dealing with account issues and warnings.

Here’s where you get initiated and kept out of the Facebook black hole:

One of the big reasons people use Facebook is for networking. Especially for business, it makes sense because it is a protected environment. This can be a very good thing because it keeps away spammers.

Less Spam = More Attention

This being true, your communications to your friends have a better chance of being read and responded to (which is what you want). Of course, you’ll need to know how to build your friend/contact network. Don’t worry, I’ll talk with you about that and give you tips on how I obtained 2211 friends.

Unfortunately, many new users get caught by the Facebook spam moderators and get their accounts shut down. These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

Even many seasoned Facebook users have had their accounts disabled and banned. Robert Scobleizer (a long-time and experienced Facebook user) wrote about how his account got shut down. He later got it reinstated but why make yourself go through the hassle. After the effort it takes to build up 500, 1000, or more friends, you want to protect your account and the time that you’ve put in.

There are some basic rules that you want to follow. When you are sending friend requests always include a personal message and only send the same message to 8-9 people before changing it up and sending a different one.

Realize this is a general guideline and Facebook changes their algorithm periodically. They also have human administrators that check things out when a filter is triggered.

To be ultra safe at the start when you first signing up and are getting comfortable with the Facebook laws and user community you may want to send only 5 of the same personal message each day.

This ‘message’ field is available when you do a friend request. To be clear here’s a pic of what I’m talking about:

Facebook won’t tell you exactly what their filter is but right now it seems if you send 10 or more of the same messages on the same day it triggers one of their filters and you’ll get an account warning. If you exceed the limit for account warnings (seems to be between three and five), your account will be disabled.

So the thing to remember is to vary your messages when you’re sending friend requests. I recommend, and I practice this method, that whenever you’re requesting a friend you include a personal message of how you know them or if you know one of their friends mention that name and what kind of business you are in along with your contacting them. Or if you found them through a common interest group mention that in the message because it is an instant commonality and bond you share with them (which raises the chances they’ll accept your friend request).

Also, when you are e-mailing friends you make within Facebook, you must vary your message here as well. I don’t recommend emailing people you aren’t yet true friends with because it can lead to trouble. Facebook likes to enable communication between friends and has a filter that you could ‘trip’ by emailing random users. So, if you are coming out with some new product or some new cool website you want to set up an event to notify all your friends instead of attempting to e-mail them all individually because that will cause your account to get shut down. Events are one of the Facebook applications that I’ll talk with you about further later.

You now know some of the basics of the Facebook community and how to interact with people without getting your account shut down. Follow these basic guidelines and you’ll have a good Facebook experience.

Basically, don’t send the same friend request more than 10 times per day, and don’t send the same email to your friends more than 10 times per day. I’m talking when you’re doing cutting and pasting. These are guidelines that are working right now but to be ultra safe you could do only 5 of the same per day.

Now for another huge bugaboo…mass emails. You know the ones that are sent to you and 100 other email addresses in the ‘to field’

Here’s an example:

As you can see there are many email addresses that this was sent to and this makes people (especially Facebook people) angry. You’ll often get angry messages back in response and even some hate messages. Also, many of those people may unfriend you. This can hurt your ability to make new friends. It’s just not worth it. So stay away from this. The right way to do it is by using the Events application. Setup an event and invite all your friends to it through the events invite function. That’s the only way to do this correctly.

Email is a 1-to-1 communication and you should always think of it as you have a face-to-face conversation with someone sitting across the table from you or next to you on a couch or in a chair.

Next time we’ll talk about powering up your networking through a huge time-saving tactic.

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This is a guest post by Alexander Alaric. Make sure to show him some love because he’s got a lot more to come in this series.