Social Networking

From IPL Wiki

Contents 1 About 2 How does work? 3 Best Practices 4 IPL examples 5 Hands on Activity 6 Articles about 7 Feedback and Prize Drawing

About

Social networking sites offer ways to not only create an online presence, but also to find others online and to establish links to one's own personal online 'social network.' The social network is based around creating links of friendship to others online within the social networking community, which is reflected in social networking site names such as "Friendster."

Six Degrees, which began in 1997 and shut down in 2001, was one of the earliest social networking sites (the name is from "six degrees of separation," from a "small world" experiment by Yale University psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram on social interconnectedness in 1967). Among the largest and best known sites are Facebook and MySpace, but there are also others such as Plurk. Some social networking sites are especially popular in particular countries such as Google's Orkut, which is heavily used in Brazil; others focus on a particular interest area such as business and professional networking at Linked In, or a variety of other hobbies and shared interests at Ning and MeetUp.

How does work?

Users of social networking sites register an account and then complete a profile page. Once this is done, a variety of social networking and linking options become available such as finding and 'friending' (establishing reciprocal links with) other users, joining a group, and/or becoming a 'fan' of another user. Users can post daily updates about themselves and see updates about their friends; they can also visit friends' pages, send messages, and post comments. For some users, social networking is replacing e-mail for many of their communications.

While many sites focus around online social interaction, on other sites such as MeetUp, users can find and join groups which schedule local area activities, such as hikes, bicycling, or discussions. Some sites such as Facebook and Myspace feature ability to add customizations, plugins and widgets such as for playing online games, videos, music, and showing artworks or book collections.

Best Practices

Examples of libraries and social networking include:

• Denver Public Library on MySpace
• The American Library Association on MySpace
• San Francisco Public Library on Facebook
• The Loft at Evanston Public Library on Facebook
• Library 2.0 on Ning
• Second Life Librarians on Ning

For other examples of social networking libraries, see the Library Best Practices wiki.

IPL examples

• Internet Public Library's Facebook page

• Internet Public Library's MySpace page

Hands on Activity

Explore some of the different social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Ning, Linked-in, MeetUp, Friendster, Plurk. You can create your own page, and join relevant groups.

The Internet Public Library has pages on both Facebook and MySpace that you can visit:

• Visit the IPL Facebook page

• Visit the IPL MySpace page

Want to join a social networking group of others who are doing the IPL 15 Things? If you are on MySpace or Facebook, you can:

• Join the IPL Facebook group for 15 Things

• Join the IPL MySpace group for 15 Things

Articles about

boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

boyd, danah. (2007). "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace ." Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24 http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

Charnigo L. and Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007). Checking out facebook.com: the impact of a digital trend on academic libraries. Information Technology and Libraries 26(1): 23-34.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A. R. and Smith, A. (2007). Teens and social media: the use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Retrieved June 1, 2008 from Pew Internet and American Life Project, http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

Reid, M. and Gray, C. (2007) Online social networks, virtual communities, enterprises, and information professionals - part 1. Past and present. Searcher, 15(7). Retrieved June 1, 2008 from http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jul07/Reid_Grey.shtml

Topper, Elisa F. (2007). Social networking in libraries. New Library World, 108(7/8), 378-380.

Feedback and Prize Drawing

To give feedback to the IPL about the 15 Things and to register for the prize drawing, please visit: http://vll.ipl.org/15things/index.html

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