New social networking sites appear every day on the Internet. Some encompass surveys and answers to pressing questions, while others include social engagement and news. But PingGadget.com, a new social networking site, is a little different.
The site, which is still in beta, lets you set up a profile with your background, suggests new friends to follow, includes your stream of Facebook and Twitter feeds and also segments your community by either location or interest or both. You also get to choose whether you let everyone see your feeds or just your friends.
What I really like about PingGadget.com is that everything is categorized. So if, for instance, you have an interest for shopping, you can see what discussion is going on about shopping. You can see who is involved in that shopping group and follow those people and you can also post questions about anything in that subject area.
I signed up for the site and started to surf around. I decided to post a question to the community at large about running a half marathon and what to do to be prepared. I got several responses. One person who lives in the U.K. told me to email him and he would get me a program.
Some of the current categories include: food, events, nightlife, music, sports and recreation, shopping, classified — like houses for sale, apartments for rent and even job postings. This site doesn’t limit you; you can even create your own subject group!
I also enjoy having the Twitter and Facebook feeds on my home page. Here I can post tweets and status updates without leaving the page. This makes it convenient and handy at the same time.
There is a section where you can save your favorite “pings.” This is helpful if you asked a question and want to refer back to some of the answers you received from your community.
Like Facebook, you can see who you are following and open their profiles and home pages and you can see who is following you. Unlike Facebook, you are not automatically friends with someone who follows you. You must follow them back, similar to Twitter.
What is also nice about the site is that you can keep your page on a stream (or other people’s updates). You have the choice of either making it people you are following, people throughout the site or just people in specific categories.
I found this site easy to use, easy to navigate and very user-friendly. I was impressed to get answers to my questions almost immediately after I posted them.
I was also impressed by the integration of the “pinging.” If I wanted to send out a “ping,” I would type it in the box that says, “share it, shout it, ping it” and could also link to either my Facebook or Twitter pages.
Although there are dozens of new sites appearing daily, there is certainly room for more in this market. I can easily see this one becoming one of my favorite sites to use.
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This article was first published in Blogcritics.org.
