Whether you call them forums, micro-blogs, discussion threads, Q/A sites or whatever, social media is an ever expanding force as more and more people across the world are born and/or getting digital. It's important to know all the good ones, not just the popular ones.
General Social Networking
- Twitter - For better or for worse, Twitter is like the de-facto of social networking because this is where you'll find most real people who are out there for networking. In a world of continuously increasing complexity and decreasing attention span, you must give it to their vision of coming up with the idea of micro blogging (very small posts) more than a decade ago! This forum is almost perfect except for a slight political bias when it comes to moderation or content censorship.
- Facebook - This "grand old website" in the social networking world isn't going away anytime soon! Despite the appalling competition and low entry barrier for hosting a forum website in today's digital age, Facebook continues to thrive and be on top due to its sheer network effect of the past.
- Quora - Quora used to be my favorite before they ruined everything with the Quora Plus Program unfortunately. Nevertheless, this Q/A site is still a great resource for finding insightful answers to all kinds of questions, and also be used for general social networking.
- Linkedin - This one is for career networking for professionals though I'm still unable to fathom what exactly did Microsoft achieve by acquiring this company few years ago. Another good resource for networking though.
- Reddit - There is something about this forum that makes people pour their hearts out and talk about every aspect of their life, be it jobs and workplaces, health and fitness, politics, technology or whatever. There are subreddits (sub-forums) dedicated to each topic where the discussions take place.
- Tildes.net - A little known alternative to reddit, this one happens to be my current favorite! That's because this is one of the rare social networking sites where you feel like you're interacting with real humans with the "be nice, be respectful" attitude which you hardly find online these days. Perhaps the reason for that is this network isn't open to registration for all, only when an existing member endorses you by sending you a link, you get to sign up there. I think this process keeps most automated AI bots and corporate shills away from there.
Technology or Social Coding
- Github - The site I'm using for hosting this open source list isn't exactly a forum but when it comes to social coding, you can't really beat Github! They're not just a source hosting facility but truly an innovator in the open source way of life or culture, at least when it comes to social interaction different open source communities.
- Stack Overflow - It's widely known that Stack Overflow is a "bread and butter" Q/A site for programmers but what's not so commonly known is that the other stack exchanges such as the History Stack Exchange, English Stack Exchange, SuperUser.com, etc. are also equally informative and insightful!
- Hacker News - Also sometimes affectionately called the "y-combinator", this one is easily the go to news and interaction forum for most tech enthusiasts.
- Dev.to - A relatively new site where users can post on technology related topics and interact through discussion threads. You'll find nice folks here who are learning new stuff just like you.