The Ground Rules

Well, if I'm going to run an experiment with any kind of credibility (and this is not meant to be scientific), I need to lay down some ground rules.

1. First, the friends I add to my social networks must be relevant. They must be people I am interested in.
2. These must be actual people, not groups, or films, or bands. They must be individuals
3. The friends must not be duplicates from different networks

I also need to limit the number of networks I use for this experiment, mainly to save my sanity (and inbox!). The networks must be loose enough where I don't have to know someone in the real world before they can be my friend (like linkedin). So, these are the networks I have chosen, which I reserve the right to change as the experiment progresses (for instance, if I get an unmanageable amount of spam):

1. Myspace - begrudgingly I am adding this simply because it is so loose. Otherwise I hate it.
2. Facebook - not very loose really, but I use it pretty frequently already. I'd like to see how well I can meet new people through it.
3. Friendster - haven't experimented with this yet, but read that it was one of the first, and therefore perhaps one of the most populous.
4. YouTube - I am already a heavy YouTube user, with 8 subscribers, all interesting people I do not know in the real world. Here I will count both subscribers and friends as friends.
5. Flickr - adding this because there are some really interesting people on Flickr
6. Pownce - technically filesharing, but you have to have a network of friends to share with. I'm not sure how effective this one will be.
   
7. Kindfish - finally, this is the site I work for, and it has many social networking aspects. Not very populous, at least yet, but since I work with it all day, I will be killing two birds with one stone.

In addition, I may not restrict myself to the sites above. If I find interesting people listed elsewhere, I might look them up on the sites above, so I will not rely entirely on the internal social networking mechanisms.