Myspace has always been a great tool for social networking. It was one of the origionals and as such has the biggest user base. With the advent of other networks like Facebook, its hard to decide which network is best for finding new clients.

Photographers are always in a constant state of search for new clients and models to work with. Even the most established studios spend time searching various places for new and undiscovered talents to work with and mold. Myspace has always been more of the teeny bopper crowd and as such wasn't the best place for a long time to have a portfolio profile. That has changed some in the last year or so, and is remarkedly changed with the new programming features that Myspace has implemented.

With the growth of competition from other networks, Myspace has been forced to constantly reavaluate and update its structure and programming. One of the newest updates is the Facebook replica of "Friend Updates". This section is on the home page of the users login and is a detailed box of what friends have updated on their profiles. This in and of itself isn't the biggest news in the world, but if you look a bit deeper it certainly helps out photographers with portfolio profiles in a huge way.

Within the friend update box is a section for updated photos. When a friend updates any album or photo on their profile all of their network is notified and shown a small thumbnail of that image with a direct link to it. Whoa! Can we say free marketing and advertising?

Photographers that are utilizing Myspace for portfolio profiles and looking to gain some free exposure to a larger audiance should certainly take advantage of this new feature. Outside of the photographer / model social networks like OMP and Model Mayhem, I suggest having a profile on Myspace as well as Facebook. They are the two dominant players in this market for the moment, and with them copycatting each other with programming they are increasingly making it easier for photographers to publicize their new work to a large audience almost instantly.

One of the other bonuses to this feature is that photographers can gauge reaction to their works, and learn what will sell and not sell. This particular method is quite helpful for photographers looking to sell printed photographs. Simply posting a link on your profile to your store for printed photographs will give you a nice analytical tool to determine which images are good sellers and which need work or replacement.