By far the easiest way to stay connected... Facebook (facebook.com)

Member Name: robvr6

Product:	facebook.com
Date:	15/06/09 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ease of access and use. good applications

Disadvantages: possible exes finding you!! not very customisable

if you are new to the world of social network sites, you could do far worse than start here. facebook is very easy to set up and use, so much so that most of my relatives have accounts now.
Users of the site can find all of their hotmail, or yahoo contacts easily by allowing the site to access your address book, and also once you have started adding friends it will start to offer reccomendations to you of sites, people and fan pages, according to what your interests are, who you know, and what you put on your status (a lot of people dont notice the last one, but if you put a brand name in your status, you will be offered adverts accordingly on the right hand side of the page!!)
basically, the more info you divulge and the more people you know, the more you will find, and your usage will snowball... be warned!
you can also add applications, such as highly addictive online games, and pointless tests.
facebook also has an instant messaging function, which you can turn on and off when you feel like it. and the ability to update your status (which is pretty much all that twitter does, full stop)

Summary: the easy to use constantly growing social network