By Dennis D. McDonald

I am experimenting with development of a simple graphical map of the online networking tools I use for personal and professional networking. I started this as a way to illustrate to people how different tools can be used and how their features differ.

You can see the current version below that I am maintaining using the MindMeister tool. This view reflects changes as they are made when I am logged into the application and I have "publish" turned on.

A couple of observations:

• I have not yet attempted to show the "interaction" among the different tools, e.g., the way Twitter messages can be displayed within Facebook.
• I've used icons to represent various "features" of the tools. The features I've tried to include so far are:
• Can create sub groups
• Can create & post content (of any type)
  
• Can do person to person messaging (includes email)
  
• Personal Use
• Professional Use
• Maintain Personal Profile
• Not Openly Searchable (e.g., via a general Google search)
  

Are there any important features I've left out?

I've left some tools off. For example, I haven't entered "Second Life" in a long long time (I could never get my avatar to look the way I wanted) and I recently deleted my MySpace account.  I'm still trying to figure out how to delete my Pownce account, which just won't go away.
.