Social networks are the major driving force behind the Internet and using them is almost a necessity these days. In a world without Facebook and the bunch, you would have to market your products and services all by yourself and do it all manually. Now, subscribing to a site such as Ping.fm allows you to post news, updates, status changes and other informational tidbits to just about every service you can imagine.

What is Ping.fm?

At the time of this writing, Ping.fm supports 42 social networking sites and services. The premise is simple–you sign up for Ping.fm, add your login credentials for each of the sites you are part of and start posting.

Ping.fm simplifies your life by enabling access to your desired services and allowing you to post once to your Ping account via the website or their desktop software and your message instantly becomes available to all of your social sites.

They also allow you to post your messages from a slew of other sources like Skype, SMS from your cell phone, GoogleTalk, Yahoo! or right from your iPhone (no app yet).

Signing up for Ping.fm is free as well as all of the services it supports, so there’s no reason not to get a few under your belt.

Do I need more than one service?

You or someone you know might only be connected with a Facebook account and a Twitter account, but find that even then, it’s too much to handle. I agree–when you use these accounts for personal use. However, in the business realm, I find that the more sites you join (and post to), the more exposure you get. Actually, it’s just plain common sense.

I don’t know exactly how many social networks there are out there, but I can contest to at least over 40! Obviously, if you had a login to every service, you’d go nuts trying to update all of them. Fortunately that’s where Ping.fm comes in to play.

My two cents

From a business standpoint, you’ll want to have a multitude of services at your disposal. The more, the better. Let’s take a small example to see why this is a benefit to you. Pretend that of the 42 services Ping.fm offers, you only had a Facebook account. If you had 100 friends on Facebook, you can send your message out to 100 people each time.

Now what about the 50 co-workers that don’t use Facebook? They’re over on LinkedIn and they don’t get your Facebook post. Wouldn’t it be nice to broadcast your message to 150 people? Now add the people searching links on del.icio.us, Yahoo!, etc. and the total number of people can really add up!