Let's turn our attention to two of the largest social networking sites on the web - MySpace and Facebook.
You probably know of MySpace as the site most kids and teens are glued to after school. But what's the attraction? At MySpace, you can rediscover old friends, meet new people who share your interests, discover new music, watch videos, keep a blog, inform your friends of upcoming events, share photographs, send messages to others, join groups based on anything under the sun, fall in love, play games, search the classifieds, watch a film trailer, and be a groupie. It is a world within itself, with all the trials and treasure of real life. It's even being used by the police and fbi to solve crime.
Facebook is very similar to MySpace in concept. It originally was marketed to the college crowd and continues to draw in this older age group. Here's an article with a nice graphic that breaks down how Facebook users spent their time in August 2007. Facebook has a cleaner look to it overall than MySpace and seems a bit more private as well. With Facebook, you are often asked to confirm facts that someone posts about you, such as when and how you met someone. This certainly makes you feel a bit more connected to someone instead of just clicking a button that marks a person as a friend.
You receive a lot less junk mail through Facebook than Myspace, particularly from artists looking to expand their listening base. However, Myspace has just recently added some new options to make it easier to avoid unwanted friend requests and other spam. Which of these two sites is better? That depends completely on the user. Some use both to cover all their networking needs - MySpace for friends and family and Facebook for professional contacts.
Discovery Exercise
1. Explore MySpace or Facebook. (Optional: Make an account for yourself at MySpace and/or Facebook. Feel free to put in fake information if you're concerned about your privacy. You will need to give them a real email address, however, in order to verify the account(s).)
2. Search for someone - in Facebook, someone you know; in MySpace, a friend, author, library, band, etc. Even books and movies sometimes have their own pages.
4. If you are in MySpace, use the search engine to look for libraries that have their own pages.
5. Post in your blog about your experience using a social networking site. What did you like or not like about the site? How do you think these sites might be useful to libraries?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment