Thing #8: Social Networking Sites

What is a social networking site?

Watch the video to get a quick overview.

You've heard of MySpace and Facebook. Social networking has created powerful new ways to communicate and share information. These websites are being used by millions of people everyday, and are becoming part of daily life.

Why should you know about social networking sites?

Social networks are becoming THE way to socialize and exchange ideas, especially for young adults and college students. Knowing about them and using them can help libraries network and outreach to a wider population.

Social networking is unbelievably popular. According to Wikipedia's List of Social Networking Sites, as of August 18, 2008, MySpace has 114,000,000 registered users and Facebook has 124,000,000.

The reality is that many younger users come to the library specifically to check MySpace and/or Facebook. These users are our customers, and we should not only know that they're using these networks, but understand how these networks work.

Libraries on MySpace Libraries can set up MySpace profiles and highlight their services, events and resources there. You can also send out event invitations, post information to your blog, and send out bulletins. You might just reach someone who didn't know about your library.

Discovery Exercise

If you want to sign up for Myspace:

1. Sign up for a personal MySpace account and send a friend request to the Pima County Public Library.

2. Set up your profile on MySpace, filling it as little or as much as you want. If you get adventurous, feel free to make your MySpace profile as colorful, bland, crazy, or fun as you want.

3. Do a blog entry on your MySpace profile. (Go to Home in MySpace, and click on Manage Blog to find your blog.) Your entry can be short!

If you want to sign up for Facebook:

1. Sign up for a personal Facebook account and send a friend request to the Pima County Public Library.

2. Set up your profile on Facebook, filling it as little or as much as you want. If you get adventurous, feel free to add different applications to your account such as Visual Bookshelf and Goodreads.

3. Post a note on your Facebook profile. A note is a Facebook blog post. (Click on Applications, then on Notes.) Your entry can be short!

Libraries on MySpace:

More information for the curious

What you can do on MySpace

Check your messages and respond. (Like email!)
Accept or deny friend requests from other users. People don't get a message when you deny them. Denying is ok, even if it feels sort of mean.
Edit and upload photos and videos that you have created.
Edit your profile.
You can set your profile so that only your friends can see it.
Manage your calendar, which can be shown to friends, the public at large, or kept private. You can choose to send a reminder to yourself that will appear in either your MySpace email, other email address, or both.
Manage your personal blog, which is mostly expressing your thoughts, feelings, or opinions or whatever else you want to write about. It is best to write with your audience in mind, meaning there are things you can say to your friends that you would not necessarily want the rest of the public to know.
See how your friends are doing with friend updates, status, and mood. Post your status and mood and your friends will know how you are doing when you change your profile.
Chat with online friends.
Use the bulletin space as a way to share news or cool things you and your friends find online with each other.
See who all of your friends are and arrange them by who you want to show as your top friends.
When your friends' birthdays are coming up, it will say new birthdays in the same spot where the user receives notifications of new emails, new friend requests, new comments, etc.
Add applications such as games, presents (i.e. ice cream, hugs, and angels), quizzes and polls, and much more. With each application, you can choose to share what you are doing with your friends, add it to your profile, or keep it to yourself, and if you would like to receive notifications for your applications (you can change this setting later).
You can let people see your basic data such as your name, birth date, location, etc. (if you do not want any of your data shown, you will have to delete all of your applications, because they will not work without this kind of data).
You can remove applications, and you can block applications.

More MySpace Features

MySpace Music allows you to find artists and add their songs to your profile, download songs if allowed, see the lyrics, add them to your friends, and make comments.
MySpace TV has videos users have made most popular videos movie trailers previews and clips of TV shows internet and MySpace specific channels such as MySpace Fashion and MondMedia as well as international channels such as the BBC.

Facebook and MySpace Similarities:

home pages and profiles
ability to find other users
status updates
inbox
groups
you can join events
you can post
ability to add photos and videos to your profile
bulletin board features that display what your friends are up to and what they have posted
fun applications!
ability to add music to your profile

Differences:

On Facebook, you do not have colorful layouts available like on MySpace. MySpace is completely editable and customizable, which is one of the attractions to it.
Facebook blocks more spam users, so you'll get less spam friend requests.
You can tag a person in a photo on Facebook, and people can find people in photos by these tags.
With a Facebook account, you can display who you are in a relationship with as long as the other person confirms the relationship.
You can buy and sell anything you want on Facebook through Facebook Marketplace.
Facebook, unlike MySpace, does not have Internet and International TV channels and scenes from movies.

The Impact of Social Networking

Social networking can have a significant impact. Read The Online Fan World of the Twilight Vampire Books to get an idea of the power of social networks.

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