cademia.edu is a free social networking website and collaboration tool aimed at academics and researchers from all disciplines. Like Facebook or LinkedIn for academics, but not as annoying or distracting. Very focussed on academia.
Launched in September 2008, it became one of the largest social networking sites/portals for academics in 2010.
"Using Twitter for Curated Academic Content"
(Yes, you could do this or you could just use Zite or even Flipboard - apps freely available via iTunes. Mal Booth)
Great presentation with some simple advice for academics and researchers about raising their online profiles, using open access and some colaborative tools.
Graduate Junction is an online community connecting postgraduates who have similar academic interests. Graduate Junction aims to break down the interdisciplinary and institutional barriers that exist in academia and connect people based only on the work that they do and the interests that they have. Graduate Junction was founded in 2008 by two postgraduates at Durham University working alongside their own degree projects because they felt isolated in their own fields. When the first version of the Graduate Junction platform was launched it received support from postgraduates and academics alike. It has continued to grow with the community now containing almost 16,000 members.
The community has continued to evolve over time with new functions and features added based upon suggestions from the community itself. All functionality added to the site since its launch has been requested by postgraduates. Despite having no external funding or support these changes have been made possible thanks to the time input of postgraduate volunteers, making Graduate Junction an entirely postgraduate-led initiative.
Interesting blog post re a growing and disturbing trend - academic spamming in the name of "open access publication". Read before you agree to any approach from InTech
For the best in academic information, go to a Ph.D. Blogs written by PhD's have great content and sometimes very frequent content. There are some blogs that are mostly aimed at other PhD's, but some are for the general populous. Enjoy topics of all kinds with expert information. You might even get some freebees.