On Social Networking (iHCPL Week 8: #18)
Recently, my old college roommate nearly begged me to join MySpace: “it’s the ONLY way I keep up with my friends,” she said. Begrudgingly, I joined, even though it took me an eternity to “add” her to my network – she had so many plugins and such on her MySpace page that my computer couldn’t load the page. So I waited and waited until she changed her page and I could finally access it to add her. Even though her page is a little tidier, it still gives me a headache looking at all the slideshows that she has on it.
Facebook, on the other hand, is much less messy. And that’s why I like it better. I don’t fear having seizures from looking at all the flashing gizmos that people have on their pages (like they do on MySpace).
My thing with social networking is that I really don’t care that much to know all my friends’ friends. I have my own friends – why do I need to get more friends from my friends? And I don’t have much time to keep up with my own friends, so making friends with their friends isn’t a very good idea. How am I supposed to keep up with them all?
And although I know that email isn’t really personal (messages can be intercepted and read quite easily) – it’s much more private and personal than leaving messages on someone’s page for all people to see.
On the professional side, there are many public and academic librarians (mostly academic librarians) who are creating their own MySpace and Facebook pages in order to communicate with students in the way that students actually communicate. Some librarians worry that this is a way for us to stick our noses where we’re not really wanted, but those who have actually leaped in have had some success with it. This page has links to some of the articles written about libraries involved in MySpace.
Where do I stand on this issue? I’m still on the fence. I’d like to try it out, but then I fear the potential embarrassment of my library getting some unsavory friends. For crying out loud – wear clothes when you take pictures of yourself to post to online services!
Toodle-oo!
