No specific order to this, but here are some of the authors I follow:

JA Konrath/Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch - grouped together because I don't necessarily read their fiction, but their writings on the publishing industry and the ebook trends/indie trends in particular.

Amanda Hocking, who is the indie publishing wild success story of the moment, has a great blog. If nothing else read the post "an epic tale of how it all happened."

Mary Robinette Kowal - who is a Hatracker who wrote a beautiful Jane Austen-like book with magic (called Shades of Milk and Honey) and who is also a professional puppet-maker/puppeteer. She has some of the world's worst travel karma, she's turned it into a drinking game (#marygoround.) Her stuff is fun when she's building puppets, as she's doing at the moment.

Neil Gaiman has a really insightful blog, and a pretty popular twitter feed.

John Scalzi has one of the penultimate writer's blogs, as well as a big twitter following.

Dave Farland & Kevin Anderson both push a fair amount of interesting writerly updates through their facebook feeds (I think they come from twitter but I read mostly on FB.)

Hatrack contributor/alum Jamie Ford has a FB page and a wry sense of humor, very fun (and he's in the midst of edits right now, too.)

Some of my favorite Middle-Grade/YA authors have blogs and/or facebook and/or twitter presences. Shannon Hale, Sarah Prineas (who turns out to be just a really nice person, too.), Robin McKinley (blog mostly - who knew this fantasy bestseller also has "hellhounds" which as far as I can tell are greyhounds or whippets, but she only ever refers to them as hellhounds so I can't be sure. Perhaps she did get them from Hades himself...) I just thought of about four more authors I could go look for, too.

Who else do you follow/what do you learn from the authors you are connected with on social media? Where are you headed with your own social media "presence" with an eye toward being an author that fans would want to connect with online in the future?

Aside from that...I might check out the blogs of friends or acquaintances (nearly all of the online variety) every so often, but not as a regular deal. Also the great majority of my reading activity these days is away from SF or fantasy...but the same rule applies.

I know a lot of SF/F authors, and check blogs and FB status on several as I am able (due to time constraints--you people are more important to me and therefore get more of my time).

I got a friend request on Goodreads that really tickled me, though. An author whose books I'd recommended a lot, happened to notice my positive reviews on Goodreads, and asked to be my friend there. It's interesting to see what books this author reads (when not writing the next book, of course).

Yeah, I know. Michael Stackpole has one--funny thing about him I like his writing but I don't read much of his stuff.

But a whole parcel of new writers have Blogs and/or web sites. John Levitt, he has two detective books out and a UF series and is supposedly working on a YA series, has a blog and a journal over at livejournel.com. I don't recall if he twitters or had facebook page.

Seanan McGuire has web site complete with a forum .

Lisa Shearin has a web site with a store--some neat pirate type T-shirts.

Jim Butcher, as I have mentioned on another thread, has two web sites. One has a forum.

Margaret Ronald has a blog I think. I need to check it out, it's been a long time but I'm afraid a get a bit jealous when I go to hers. She lists all of her published stories, in most of the markets I've been trying to get in.

Mark Del Franco, has a web site with a forum and a blog. He recently changed his and I'm glad. The previous one did strange things to my eyes, almost giving me a headache. It had this yellow blob with the links to the other pages and when the curser touched the name, it moved upward and a menu opened up. When that happened the whole almost bright yellow blob jiggled. But he got rid of it.

I'll be back with links just in case anyone is interested.

R. M. Meluch. I've wondered if that was a pen name. His books mentioned other books his written but on his meluch web site there are only one series. And it must be an old site. Very basic, just like some of the very first sites and he doesn't update it very often. Well, I haven't checked it in months so he might have done more by now.

A while back I read an article about one writer, forget who, who tweets her famous character. As I said I forget who the writer and character are but I found that interesting.

I sent a link to that article to about five of those writers I listed. None seem to be interested in doing it though. Too bad, if any did I may get a twitter account just for that, even though I don't have a cell phone. But two, at least, listed their twitter comments on a side bar on their blog.