--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec
When using the social web, there two types of interacting with it: one is the visitor and the other is the resident.
The visitor, which is the most common use, is when you use the internet as if it where a tool box, you open it and use the information to solve any problem and then you close the box and leave. In other words, is when you navigate in the internet and the social web to get information that you can use without providing something useful for the community; is not a bad thing though and the footprint you are leaving is small.
In the other hand the resident type is about leaving a bigger impact in the internet community; because is kind of difficult to explain, I’m going to put an example: When you have a blog and post about things regularly, or when you comment in other post providing something useful or when twitting or commenting on Facebook. Those are examples of using a social web as a resident type.
The resident type usually leave a stronger digital presence, and by presence a mean by how other people sense you in the social web. It has it advantages, one of them is that it creates opportunity. This happens when you find people with the same ideas and interest like you and by helping each other you can fin any kind of opportunity that can benefit you in many different ways.
Whether the user type you are, there two uses for them, one is personal and the other professional. The two concept are kind of obvious, the first ones is when you use the social media for your own purpose, for example, entertainment; and the professional is for work and probably for education.
I will leave here an interview of someone talking about how he uses and classify the social web.
