What fascinating venue are we going to explore together today? Today we enter into the world of "Social Networking". No I am not talking about the lame movie with Justin Timberlake; what I am talking about is a whole plethora of websites that seem to be expanding every day.
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| A Selection of Social Networking Site Logos |
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media includes things such as social networking, social book marching, and social cataloguing.
A social network is an online service, or site that focuses on building and reflecting social networks or social relations among people, share interests or activities. A social network site usually consists of each individuals users representation of him or herself; sometimes called a profile, and a variety of additional pages or services. The most popular forms of social media are web based sites that provide ways for users to stay in touch with each other through things like email, and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to stay connected and share ideas, thoughts, activities, events, photos, videos and interests with their individual networks.
The most popular form of social networking site over the last few years has been the more "friend" based sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. The main purpose behind these sites is to get or stay connected to your friends through personalized profile pages. The pages and their ease of use can vary greatly from site to site. For example Facebook is quite user friendly as you just type your information into pre-prepared boxes; but the information on every one's page is displayed in nearly identical ways. Facebook page do not allow for very much personalization. On the other hand Myspace allowed for a much more personalized page, including music, background pics and colours as well as thousands of different lay outs; essentially allowing the user to be as creative with their profile page as he or she wanted. Unfortunately in order to personalize your Myspace page you had to be much more HTML comfortable.
The amount of information you give is completely up to you. The things the site will require you to give are a name, (not necessarily your real name, but it will make it much more difficult for friends to find you if you don't provide your true identity.) and an email address. After that you can provide as much or as little information about yourself that you wish. Most social media sites allow you to add a pictures of yourself, age, birthday, city you live in, sex, education and relationship status. But like I said you only have to give as much of that information as you want. Social networking sites are the most popular in the world of social media. These sites allow people to connect with one another based on personal interests, common activities or simply the fact that they are friends in the "real world". On these sites you can post pictures, chat with long lost friends are people sitting right beside you. You can connect with people you haven't seen in ages or find out what your latest celebrity crush is up to today. Interesting Facebook fact: The fastest growing Facebook demographic is those 25 years old or older. I personally have used Myspace, Bebo and Facebook. I used to really like Myspace when people were actually on it. I like being able to personalize my sites with backgrounds and pictures that show who I am and what I am interested in. (I think that is one of the big reasons I use Google Chrome; because I can choose an adorable cupcake them for my tabs!) Bebo wasn't a bad site either. I mainly used it when I lived in Europe to connect with my friends who lived in Ireland who though "Facebook would never last" (Yup my cousin Joanne said this to me and she now has 3 Facebook pages!) I have a Facebook page (Amanda's Facebook). I jumped on the band wagon quite early in the game. In face the first time I tried to sign up; you still had to be affiliated with specific schools. I find Facebook extremely easy to use, but also incredibly annoying. The number of ads on their pages has gone up exponentially over the last few years and I don't know how much influence Mark Zuckerberg actually has any more with the day to day Facebook operations but if you are listening; STOP UPDATING FACEBOOK EVERY OTHER WEEK! My big frustration with Facebook is that every time you get used to a function, they "update" it or tweak it in some unnecessary way.
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| A Facebook page template |
Social networking sites such as Bebo, Google+ and Facebook are just one facet of the world of social media. Social media can refer to any web based or mobile based site that aims to turn communication into an interactive experience. When people talk about social media they are including social bookmarking site, and social cataloguing sites as well as social networking.
Before I took my multimedia class I thought I was pretty plugged to the social world. But as it turns out I knew nothing. I had never used RSS feeds, other than Wikipedia had never used a wiki, and of course I had never used social bookmarking pages. So whilst researching for this blog I looked into three different social book marking sites.
The first was Delicious which is a very visual based bookmarking page. To me it seemed just a little to random, but I could see the appeal to the masses. It draws you in right away with its almost application style graphics.
The second was Digg which I have to say I did not like at all. It looks like just a boring list of information. The topics seem very random, but not one of the topics actually drew me in enough to make me want to read anything on this page.
The third page, which I preferred the most was Reddit. This one is actually quite similar to Digg but it appealed to a lot more, I think because of the topics. At the top of the page is a bunch of topics that you can choose from, which helps you narrow your reading a lot more then the Digg site. You can choose from anything from politics to pictures, funny to aww, to atheism to technology. I like a site that caters to a wide range of people and topics.
So now that we know what falls under the "social media" umbrella what does that have to do with libraries? Does social media have a place in libraries? I would have to say in today's world yes they do. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook can be somewhat beneficial to libraries; depending on the type of library I think. I think that these types of sites would be good to get the younger audience involved in the library. It is very uncommon these days for teen in North America and Europe to not have a Facebook or Twitter or both. So why not let libraries use that to their advantage. These sites could get people talking about what is going on in the library and get the patrons opinions about how they feel and what they would like to see. Specialized libraries also would greatly benefit from these sites. Music libraries can post when they get new scores that they know people have been waiting for. People can tweet to their librarian or library tech and let them know what they want to see in their library without having to go in person and talk to the scary lady with the bun in her hair and the chain on her glasses. (That is what comes to mind when people think about their librarian admit it!) Social bookmarking sites to could be beneficial. Sites like Reddit that had topic tabs would make it easier for patrons to find the news that they want specifically instead of having to wade through all the news of the library on their own homepages.
The biggest problem I see with all these sites is how do we let our patrons know of the existence of our Facebook/Twitter/Reddit or other social media sites. We have to make sure we take advantage of these free sites as much as we can. In order to use them to their full capacity we have to advertise to our patrons that we are using these sites. For these sites to work the patrons have to find us; and they cannot find us if they do not know that we exist. Putting up signs in the teen areas, putting the links on our due date slips, putting links on the websites and mentioning by verbal communicating are all ways we can easily let our patrons know about our social sites. Even school libraries could benefit from these sites. Instead of trying to get our kids off Facebook; which is a losing battle; lets try to get them to use these sites to educate them and connect with teachers and librarians. If a student has questions they can tweet their teacher or fellow student for help. It may not be ideal; but lets be honest kids are much more willing to participate in their education when they can incorporate the sites they are already using.
So friends as much as we are all sick of hearing the "F" word it seems like it will be here to stay; at least for a little while. And as much as I thought it was dying I think Twitter also will be around for the foreseeable future too. If you aren't using any social media sites I encourage you to try them. They aren't scary and they are a great way to stay connected to news and friends. (I was just Facebook chatting with my friend Michael in Turkey this morning while I ate my tofu scramble!)
I am off to finish my Soy Gingerbread latte before it gets too cold!
Till next time.
Your friendly non-bun wearing librarian.
Amanda
Here are a few of my favorite celebrity tweeters!
(If you want to follow Celebrities make sure they saw "verified" so you know it is actually your favorite celeb and not a random person pretending to be them!)
The One and Only Genius Karl Lagerfeld
Russell Brand
Stephen Colbert
My Twitter!
Dee Plume
For anyone wanting to update their "Librarian look" use must go to Zenni. For those of you in Internet land who have never heard of Zenni let me fill you in. (PS I am a little obsessed) This is a site where you can get prescription glasses for between $9.95 and $29.99. That is right your prescription in your choice of frame, shipped to your house for less then dinner and a movie.
And for the best in librarian sweaters visit the 15 dollar store, where as you guess from the title everything is $15. And to complete your total look visit this librarians very favourite salon Berns and Black and get a bun (or cut or anything else!). Here is a look at their Facebook page. I HIGHLY recommend Roger!
Librarian currently reading:
Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit
Recommendations for the season:
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