Week 5: Get Social -My Space and Facebook

Listen to audio here

I'm sure you have heard of MySpace, and not necessarily in a positive light. Recently, MySpace has appeared in the news for all the wrong reasons.

MySpace is an organised space that allows you to personalise your interests and activities on the Web. You can browse, search, invite friends to connect and interact, share film reviews, make comments, post mail and blog entries, view videos, post classified ads and much more. It has also gone mobile.

MySpace is an incredibly popular communication tool amongst teenagers, and libraries have begun using MySpace to market to their teenaged patrons. Despite controversy over the issue, the use of creating Library spaces in MySpace is really taking off. Read through the Discovery Resources links below to get an idea of what different libraries are doing in MySpace and what librarians are saying about MySpace!

MySpace is busier than Google, with reports showing that it gets between two and three times Google's daily traffic. Over 150,000 new MySpace accounts are created daily, so its capacity to each a wide audience is mind-boggling.

Discovery Resources

• A list of libraries using MySpace
• How libraries are using MySpace
• Sunrise MySpace tips

Tasks

In your blog, answer the following questions:

1. View several library MySpace pages (Yarra Plenty has a Youth Space) and examine their content. How are they using MySpace?
2. List the useful headings on these pages that you feel would be of benefit to your own Library MySpace.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking web site that connects people with others. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Originally, the membership was restricted to students of Harvard University but since 2006 it has been open to all email addresses. Users can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a school, place of employment, or geographic region.

In June 2007, Facebook was ranked in the top 10–20 web sites and was the number one site for photos in the United States, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily. It is also the seventh most visited site in the United States. Time magazine reported in its 3 September 2007 issue that Facebook's fastest growing demographic consists of people 35 years or over.

The name, Facebook, refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff.

Discovery Resources

NB: Please note that Facebook has only been released to the "general public" recently. Although some of the following resources state that facebook is only available to students registered at certain colleges, this statement is no longer correct.

• 7 things you should know about Facebook
• Prediction: Facebook will be the largest social network in the world
• Facebook's plan to hook up the world

Tasks

1. Go to Facebook and register. Check out this tutorial for assistance on how to join.
2. Edit your Profile
3. Search for a person you know or work with. See if you can find them and add them as your friend.

Added resources:

Another social networking site of interest is Ning. I find it personally more engaging and informative for professional development uses. Why not visit the site and search for 'Librarians'. You'll be surprised how many varied groups are out there!