Myspace, Facebook, Ning and Netvibes

There are definite benefits to be had with either a Myspace or Facebook page and joining their groups or communities.
The benefits are that you can have a personal public presence but the drawback is that it is only public to other Myspace or Facebook members who you accept as "friends".
I joined both Myspace and  Facebook, looked around both, but chose not to pursue either because of the requirement for anyone I wish to refer to my content having to become a member themselves.
There is also seems to be an element of the "mob madness", in that pages are created simply because it is "cool" to do so. 

I also signed up as a member of Ning as I had found a specific group that I was interested in, but again the membership requirement was off-putting.

In the post about iGoogle I referred to Netvibes and I have been developing BOTH my PRIVATE pages for the information I  "Pull" from the Web and PUBLIC pages for my new authentic personal web presence.
It is just less complicated having a single web portal.

Instead of, for example, joining a Photography group on Ning I can join a (better) Beginners Photography group on Flickr, and refer anyone wanting to check me out to my public Netvibes page via my Flickr profile.
(As I have now done on the profile on this Blog.)