Social networking sites can be very useful tools in your blogging arsenal. The trick is knowing which ones to use, and more importantly, which ones not to use.

To begin with I will separate the networking sites into two groups, personal and business. Just like with blogging, it is beneficial to use two social networking sites, one for personal matters and one for your business.

Personal social networking sites are all over the place and new ones crop up everyday so it pays to be selective. Myspace is yesterdays news and a complete waste of time, plagued by spam and retina straining bad design. Facebook, heralded by many, wrongly thank goodness, as the future of the internet is also a colossal waste of time. It could have been much better but it pandered to the lowest common denominator of its user base and has ended up being another spam factory selling your personal information to highest bidder. Avoid these two at all costs, and if you have accounts with them close them immediately and stop wasting your time.

For personal social networking I recommend Virb. Here is the pitch from the virb team themselves, “Virb is a place that lets you put all of the things that make you you – photos, videos, blogs – in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you). More specifically, VIRB is our vision of a social community – done right. A website that combines you, your interests, your friends and the things you like with music, art, fashion, film and more. Stay connected with your friends. Find new music. View and upload good videos, photos and more.”

The real beauty of Virb is that it works for you, rather than you working for them. You can customize your pages very easily without any of the rubbish that Myspace of Facebook put in your way. The killer app is ability to integrate and syndicate your blog with just a couple of clicks in your settings panel. Virb then grabs your blog posts automatically and makes them available to your friends, and their friends, and so on.

It works. I’ve been using it for a while now. Give them a try at virb.com.

Business networking sites are a little thinner on the ground but two obvious ones spring to mind. Ryze and Linkedin. The problem with both of these sites is that they are constantly trying to persuade you to upgrade your account for a paid membership. Ryze is pretty unusable unless you pay, and even then it has a very outdated feel to it and is a popular stomping ground for MLM scams. I’ve had a free account with them for a few years and have had nothing but junk.

Linkedin, on the other hand, is genuinely useful. Even in its free form, as long as you spend a little time learning the ins and outs of the interface and work the system for your benefit. You can find them at linkedin.com.

I strongly advise that you open a free account at both virb.com and linkedin.com. It is not advisable to use more than two social networks since the time spent moving from one to the other will be counter productive. It may seem wise to try and cover as many bases as possible but you really can end up chasing your tail if you’re not careful.

And please, delete those Facebook and Myspace accounts before you waste anymore of your valuable time.