10 Social Networking Apps

Update your status when you're away from your computer with Twitter, a text message–based moblogging service. To get started, sign up for an account on the Twitter site. If you use Facebook, you can add the app to your profile page, and your text updates will automatically post there. On MySpace, it's easiest to copy the Twitter "badge" (a bunch of HTML code) directly from the Twitter site into your profile. Of course, both Facebook and MySpace already let you make mobile updates to your status without using Twitter (it's much simpler to do this on Facebook than on MySpace), but Twitter makes it easier to communicate with all your contacts at once — including people who aren't on your social network but can receive text messages on their phone.

—Anita Hamilton