A day-old fundraising campaign done solely through text messages and made viral on networking sites like Twitter and Facebook has raised more than $3 million for the Red Cross’s relief work in Haiti.”It’s shattered any record that we’ve seen with mobile giving before,” said Wendy Harman, social media manager for the Red Cross.

The campaign leads a spate of online efforts that have allowed people to help victims of the earthquake that has devastated the island nation.

At midday Thursday, five of the 10 most popular topics on Twitter were either directly or indirectly related to Haiti — with “Help Haiti” topping the list.

Many celebrities, including singer Adam Lambert, actor Ben Stiller, cyclist Lance Armstrong and actress Lindsay Lohan, used their Twitter feeds to plead for earthquake-relief donations.


“Yele haiti now for the disaster,” Lohan tweeted on Wednesday, referring to musician Wyclef Jean’s online earthquake relief fund. “Please do all that you can. Please.” Yele Haiti also has launched a text message fundraising campaign.

Armstrong, an active Twitter user with more than 2.3 million followers, posted that his Livestrong Foundation had pledged $250,000 to humanitarian aid groups.

The online classified site Craigslist posted a list of relief organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and CARE, along with links via which users can donate.

Multiple Facebook groups related to Haiti had been created by Thursday. One of the largest, Earthquake Haiti, had more than 102,000 members — similar to the number of members on the Red Cross’s page.

Many Facebook users also were changing their status updates to reflect when they’d donated to the Red Cross campaign — thus encouraging their friends to do likewise.

The attention appeared Wednesday to overwhelm the Web site of Yele Haiti, a Haitian relief organization founded by Jean, who was born in the ravaged country and whose uncle is Haiti’s ambassador to the United States.

The site was not accessible for periods Wednesday, and organizers posted messages on Twitter apologizing for the problem, which they said was caused by high traffic.

Red Cross spokesman Jonathan Aiken said the $3 million raised in the text-messaging campaign is a sizable portion of the $10 million total that the relief group has brought in for Haiti.

“That’s a phenomenal number that’s never been achieved before,” he said. “People text up to three times at 10 bucks a pop. You’re talking about roughly 300,000 people actually spontaneously deciding, ‘I can spare $10 for this. And that’s remarkable.”

Harman said the Red Cross has been active on Twitter since the California wildfires of 2007.

The organization also has accounts on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube as well as its own blog, and hosts an online newsroom that provides updates on the organization’s disaster responses.

She said the Red Cross has “a pretty robust social media strategy” but that the Haiti response is unprecedented.

“It feels like every person who has a Twitter account has tweeted about it, which is a pretty amazing thing to see,” she said

Social networking habits come in many forms.

Unless you have been hiding under your 24-inch monitor, you almost certainly know about the most common of these — Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

But they’re far from the only ones. Plenty of people supplement a Facebook addiction with additional social networking habits; others shun the leading brands in favor of lesser-known options. If you’re tired of Facebook, just don’t get Twitter or have decided to leave MySpace to the teenagers, then you might think about exploring another social networking service.

If you do, just embark on the endeavor with the following in mind:

A social network is only as lively as its members. Even if a site looks interesting, it won’t offer much unless you’re able to connect with real-world friends or meet new ones. There’s a reason Facebook keeps growing: There’s a fair chance you’ll find a lot of people you know there.

Review the network’s privacy policies and your personal settings to ensure you’re not sharing more information than you intended.

Participating in a social network — connecting with friends, building your personal profile, adding photos and various likes and dislikes — requires an investment of your time. You want that investment to matter. Though it may be tempting to join every upstart social network out there, be wary of startups without much of a following, as you never know if they’ll be around a year or two from now.

Here’s a selection of nine social networking sites to explore:

Ning: Maybe you don’t like the social networks out there, and you want one of your own. With Ning, you can have just that. Ning lets you create your own social network, much as do-it-yourself webpage creators let you create websites. You can choose from prefabricated themes and then add other features, like video, chat, blogs and various applications.

LivingSocial.com: At LivingSocial.com, you’re able to catalogue your interests, then glean recommendations from friends. If you’re into beer, for instance, there is a special community for you, where you can rate and review beers. Ditto for books, movies and more.

Dopplr: Serious travelers love Dopplr for the way it connects them with other international travelers interested in sharing travel plans and recommending places to eat, visit and stay in cities from Amsterdam to Zurich.

DailyBooth: Not much into words, even if it’s the meager 140 characters permitted in Twitter posts? Then DailyBooth may be for you. The website is all about connecting to people with snapshots. As at Twitter, you can “follow” other people, and they can follow you.

Change.org: Yes, you can actually do good through social networking, as is clear from a visit to Change.org. The website helps people connect with nonprofits and causes.

Goodreads: A community for book lovers, Goodreads lets you connect with friends to find out what they’re reading, suggest books and track what you’ve read and what you’re planning to read.

Kaboodle: Shopping online doesn’t always mean shopping alone. If you want to commune with other dedicated shoppers, then check out Kaboodle, where you’ll be able to share shopping lists and get recommendations from people who like the same products and styles as you.

SportsMates: For diehard sports fans, SportsMates provides a social network that’s all about connecting around teams and sports, from gymnastics to rugby and beyond.

CafeMom: As the name suggests, CafeMom is all about connecting with other moms and moms-to-be, with posts like “How do you get your kid to help?” and “Mowed the backyard … still not in labor!”

Alan Hoffman may be reached at netscan@alanhoffman.com.

1. Reddit: Popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.

2. Digg: The largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.

3. Propeller: A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.

4. Fark: A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.

5. Slashdot: Primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.

6. Metafilter: A community weblog which allows users to share links and discuss interesting websites/topics. Moderation is done through editors as well as peer pressure in order to prevent gaming.

7. I am bored: Covers general topics with a strong focus on weird and offbeat news. You can submit a link which may be posted after the editors approve it.

8. Mixx: A general social news sites which has a category for all types of news. Topics covered include business, entertainment, sports, health and tech. Includes the ability to create groups to share news with other users.

9. Shoutwire: General news site that is well populated with a loyal group of users. Topics covered include technology, politics, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.

10. Newsvine: A website consisting of community-driven news stories and opinions. Users have their own blogs and can write articles, save links to external content and vote/comment on other user stories.

11. IndianPad: A general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.

12. Linkfilter: Covers all sorts of news. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.

13. NewsCloud: A general social site with a focus on news in all topics. Similar to Newsvine, each user has their own blogs and can publish content to be voted up by other users.

14. Hugg: Hugg is a social news site with a strong focus on environmental issues. Also includes other categories like politics, science, fashion and technology.

15. Plime: A general news site which features a wide variety of topics ranging from religion and sports to technology or business. Odd news performs best in this community.

16. C2NN: An active social news site with a variety of topics including environment issues, business, politics, animals and offbeat. Similar to Hugg in focus but much more populated and active.

17. Kirsty: A general news site with a focus on fashion, entertainment and design on top of other topics like technology and food. Has a strong female user base.

18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories.

19. Stirrdup: General social news site with four broad categories: politics, technology, news and entertainment.

20. Searchles: A hybrid social news sites which covers all topics. Includes a video section and offers personalized filtering features and the option of joining groups made up of other users with similar interests.

21. Linkinn: A social news site that specializes in pictures and video. Covers a broad range of topics, particular offbeat and weird content.

22. Earthfrisk: Covers topics like humor, politics, entertainment and business. Combines a social network and group features with digg-style news voting.

23. Truemors: A social rumor news site which focuses on the publication of “true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting.” Users can post links anonymously via text, voicemail, web or email. Editors moderate content.

24. StumbleUpon: A social network and browser toolbar which allows users to channel surf the internet. Technically not 100% a social news site, although users can submit webpages to be rated by other users. Here is a guide to StumbleUpon.

25. Linkswarm: Covers a wide range of topics from celebrity gossip to funny media, science and politics. Focuses on pop culture and bizarre news as well.

Niche Social News Websites

Here are social websites which focus on a specific niche. For best results, only submit to them when your site falls within the same niche or covers the same topics. Or else you’re likely to be marked as spam.

26. Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

27. Dzone: DZone is a free link-sharing community for developers. Other topics commonly featured include web design and programming.

28. Tweako: A user-powered site and social network with a focus on guides and tutorials in all categories like computing, technology, and the Internet.

29. Autospies: A social site that focuses on automotive news, car reviews, auto show photos and videos.

30. Design Float: A social news site for design-related content. Topics covered include business, freelancing, advertising, digital art and branding.

31. Ball Hype: A site that aggregates content from thousands of sports blogs. Users can submit stories and votes will determine if they make it to home page.

32. YCombinator Hacker News: A news site that focuses on technology, startups, business and entrepreneurship.

33. SWiK: A community driven resource for people who use open source software.

34. Buzzflash: A user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit political stories.

35. DNHour: DNHour.com is a user-powered news portal built specially for the domain name industry. Most members are generally from the domain name industry, which includes domain name owners, companies or professionals.

36. PlugIM: PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Topics covered include search engine optimization, products, business and marketing.

37.Showhype: Operates in a similar way to Ballhype. Stories come from two sources — users and aggregated content. Users can also submit a link to a story that they’ve found or write their own article on ShowHype.

38. Small Business Brief: A niche social site which focuses on small business news. Topics covered include marketing and sales, website development, management and entrepreneurship.

39. Hypediss: Social news site with a focus on design, fashion, urban culture and art.

40. Chictini: Product-oriented social site which a focus on new trends and styles. It’s possible to submit news stories although most of the submissions feature products from online retailers.

41. DotNetKicks: DotNetKicks.com is a community based news site that focuses on topics like NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++ and Visual Studio.

42. Lipstick: Reddit-style social news site for celebrity gossip.

43. Hubspot: Social news site for marketers, entrepreneurs and business professionals.

44. Winelifetoday: A niche social site for wine lovers. Topics covered included news and opinion articles to do with wine.

45. iliketotallyloveit.com: Allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased.

46. Wordsy: A niche social news site for people who love reading and books. Topics covered include small presses, fiction writing, authors, book awards and poetry. (Note: Wordsy has suspended its site since Dec 2008)

47. Value Investing News: A niche social news site that covers stocks and investment news. A small but active community.

48. Teenwag: Focus on celebrity gossip. A hybrid social network with digg-style voting. Users can submit links to be voted up by other users.

49. Muti: Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.

50. Tip’d: A social media site for finance, investing, and business topics. Tip’d users vote on stories they like by clicking the ‘Tip it’ button that appears next to each story, and then can comment by pressing the ‘Discuss’ link below the story.

Part Twitter, part Steam community, and part Facebook, Raptr is a social network that gives gamers a place to connect with one another over the games they frequently play. In addition to providing gamers a platform to meet one another and connect with others who play the same games they enjoy, Raptr also gives you a way to see the games you most commonly play and enjoy. The service allows you to notify your friends when you start up a game, message your friends in and outside of game, discover new games your friends are playing, and review the games you already own.  Raptr has been around for a while and has grown significantly since its inception. In its early days, the site only allowed you to track the games you were playing and share them with other Raptr members. The service has since branched out and now tracks more games on more platforms and allows you to share the games you play on Twitter and Facebook.

If your friends aren’t Raptr members but are your friends on another social network, you can still share your status with them. You can even alert them when you make big hardware changes to your system, so Raptr can make sure your gamer friends are envious of the new video card you just installed. Best of all, Raptr will share your in-game achievements automatically with your friends, whether you unlocked a weapon in Team Fortress 2 or earned a medal in Gears of War 2.

In order to use Raptr, you’ll need to do two things: sign up for an account and download the Raptr plug-in for your PC. Raptr uses the plug-in on your PC to pull together information on the PC games you play like Steam-based games, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, and more, including Flash games that you play through your browser. On the console side, Raptr supports Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and more, as long as your game play habits are available online.

When you customize your profile, you can provide your Steam ID, your XBox Live gamertag, your Wii friend code, your PlayStation Network ID, your Xfire ID, and even your World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online character names. The more services you add, the more information Raptr can pull together to share with your friends. Once you’ve customized your profile and downloaded the Raptr client, the service goes to work pulling together information about your gaming habits as you play.

While that goes on in the background, you can get busy customizing your profile. Add some information about you to make yourself easy to find, and Raptr will do the rest. As you play, the service will update your friends and post on your other social networks when you start playing a supported game. It will also notify your Raptr friends when you unlock achievements or earn titles.

The service even tracks how often you play, what games you play most often, and how long you play. All of that information is posted to your profile so your friends can see if you’re into action games, strategy games, or RPGs, what your favorite games are, and what you’ve been playing recently.

In addition to the social features, Raptr allows members to rate the games they play. You can add them to a list of games they own and love, and even find related games that they may enjoy based on the ones they and their friends already play.

Raptr has evolved to become a social network that’s well worth the sign up and customization time. If you’re a gamer looking to meet other people who enjoy the games that you do, or if you’re already part of a gaming community and looking to share more about the games you enjoy this site is ideal. The fact that Raptr is a compliment to services like Steam and connects with your existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter make it a perfect network for gamers looking to meet new friends and show off to their current ones.

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Almost half the nation’s Internet users now take part in online social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, almost twice the rate of a year ago, The Conference Board reported Tuesday.

Of Web users, 43 percent use a social networking website, up from 27 percent last year, the nonprofit global research group said. in its quarterly Consumer Internet Barometer.

The most popular site is Facebook, used by 78 percent of social network participants, followed by MySpace (42 percent), LinkedIn (17 percent) and Twitter (10 percent).

The survey tracks about 10,000 Internet-equipped households nationwide.

It said seniors age 55 and older are quickly increasing their use of social networks, up from 6 percent last year to 19 percent this year.

Women are more likely than men to use social-network sites (48 percent versus 38 percent).

The majority of users log on at home, The Conference Board said, with a quarter logging on at work, and 10 percent connecting through their phone. More than half say they log on at least once a day.

“Online social networks are more than just a fad among the younger generation,” Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement Tuesday. “They’ve become an integral part of our personal and professional lives. They’re an effective way to keep in touch with people, connect with friends and family, and network with colleagues.

“Social media will also transform marketing as we know it. They’re powerful communication tools, and are becoming an essential part of successful marketing strategies.”

The survey said Facebook is equally popular among men and women, while women are more likely than men (47 percent versus 35 percent) to use MySpace and more men than women (21 percent versus 15 percent) use LinkedIn.

Users of the micro-blogging site Twitter say their top reasons for “tweeting” are to connect with friends (42 percent), update their status (29 percent), look for news (26 percent) and for work-related reasons (22 percent)