One of the primary concepts underpinning the Web 2.0 movement has to be that of community: sharing content and ideas with others on the greater Web. Social networking sites on the Web offer the searcher communities in any topic imaginable, from fitness to cooking to personal finance. Here are ten social networking sites that you might not know about yet, but should.
1. Wesabe
Wesabe is a social networking site centered around personal finance; the premise is that you share your financial struggles and successes with others and learn from each other’s mistakes and triumphs. There’s loads of great user tips (you can also submit your own best financial suggestions), plus, Wesabe is a fantastic Web-based money manager – you can actually use it for financial planning and personal finance management. Wesabe takes your financial info and compares it others (completely anonymously), and shows you where you could trim the fat or stand to spend a little bit more, it’s like a free, personalized budgetary consultation.
2. Stylehive
3. Plazes
4. LifeTango
Make personal goals and find others to work toward these goals with you at Life Tango, a collaborative goal-setting social networking site. Want to lose some weight? How about travel to Europe, learn Spanish, or spend more time with your family? Once you write down your goals at Life Tango, you can explore the community to find other folks who share the same interests, and then invite these people to help you along your journey. I really like this concept: it's a positive way to accomplish your sucess in tandem with other people.
5. Traineo
Studies have shown that if you want to lose weight and get fit, you’ll do better with a buddy. Traineo is a social networking site built on that concept. You get motivation and support from others who share your same fitness and/or weight loss goals, as well as accountability (you choose four people that will help keep you on track). You can also use Traineo to count calories, track your workouts, and visualize your fitness progress, as well as swap tips that have worked for you or share your struggles with the greater Traineo community.
6. BlueDot
7. Frappr
8. Minti
Parents need other parents, right? Well, Minti aims to serve this demographic with their very own social networking site. You can use Minti to get advice from other parents, get your very own family page (upload your own pics!), and make friends with other Minti community members. The best thing about Minti is that the advice comes from other parents that are “in the trenches”, so to speak, instead of glossily produced parenting magazines that make you feel somewhat inadequate for wanting to duct tape your toddler’s feet to the floor…not that anybody reading this has ever thought about doing that (of course!).
9. Gimme20
Gimme20 is another fitness-based social networking site similar to Traineo that connects fitness-oriented folks all over the Web. However, Gimme20 is a bit more workout focused. You can use Gimme20 to build your own personalized workout based on what you want to do (build muscle, lose weight, tone your legs, etc.) and share workout tips with other Gimme20 community members. It’s a good way to get inspired and encouraged.
