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Do you Facebook?

The answer in my case is…no. And it’s been a deliberate decision (under regular review) not to join it, despite regular requests from various friends. I use (with varying frequency) My Space, Bebo…I blog, I email, I wiki, I forum. I like to be in touch and aware of what’s going on in the world. I don’t, however, have an incredible compulsion to be constantly connected to my friends 24 hours a day, so, although I joined up to find out more about it, I can categorically state that I will never Twitter (unless someone can give me a better reason than “you can tell people who don’t care enough to speak to you in person everything you’re doing throughout the day, in response to a totally inane question about what you’re doing”). I also have a limit on the amount of times I really need to see the same people duplicated in my network of friends in different sites.

It started with MySpace, which I joined in a spirit of investigation and fun in February 2006, when it was filling the news headlines. I also joined Bebo at that point, and promptly forgot about it, until it was suggested by a workmate in March this year that I join, only to discover I already had! At that point MySpace was new, exciting and fun. I made friends, and more. Then Bebo became the Next Big Thing…now it’s Facebook. It’s turning into a pattern of social network hopping…How ‘cool’ you are is reflected by which networks you’re on…MySpace is SOOOO last year…Bebo’s trendy, but fading…now it’s Facebook, only opened to non-university students since September 2006.

But…I don’t WANT to Facebook! I’m one of those bizarre people that believes time is the most important thing you possess, and when you give it away you’ll never get it back. Do I really want to give my time to yet another social networking site, to see the same people doing the same things as they do on the other sites?

No.

I want to appreciate my real friends, the ones I take the time out to write letters to, even though an email’s faster. Yes, these sites are good for me to quickly update myself on how friends I don’t see often are doing, but it’s not exactly socialising with them, really. Is it?

But…could these sites help me in my work? Do I want to join library and law groups on Facebook (which I believe exist, including an IWR group), or is it more efficient to just continue reading the blogs that interest me?

I’m not yet in information overload, but would professional networking on social networks tip the balance?

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Comments

Meg said…
If you're not overloaded yet, perhaps you're lucky enough to be immune? :)

I use both FaceBook and MySpace because I've rl friends and family on both. (There's also a small group of friendly professional contacts who are on both.)

The advantage I find in FaceBook is that it notifies you whenever friends have activity, so you don't have to constantly check multiple pages for updates. Very efficient.

I'm also on Twitter, which I admit is a bit silly. A possible better reason to Twitter is to have a mobile way of keeping in touch with fellow conference attendees, finding out who's where, making dinner plans, etc. Librarians at the US Computers in Libraries conference a few months ago apparently found it very handy. I don't know if there are enough law librarians on it to make it useful at the AALL conference next month, but I'm sticking with it through then just in case.
20 June 2007 at 20:48
Dumpling said…
Hmmm...as there's only really 100 Scottish law librarians, and of that group, maybe only a dozen at a time make it to the mainly-English located conferences, we're already quite a close group, and able to arrange meeting up quite easily.
Might well work for meeting up with non-Scottish law librarians...which would mean joining Facebook to get to know them...I'm seeing a cycle here! ;-)

Good luck with the conference Twittering, would be interesting to hear how it went.
21 June 2007 at 16:40
Unknown said…
Interesting post, I feel I am approaching information overload. The problem is of course that there are just so may tools you can use to keep in touch with people form networks etc.

I have just recently started using Facebook in preference to MySpace which I am not a fan of. I am also signed up to Linkedin which was described to me as "the grown up version of MySpace"

Then of course there all the blogs to monitor including yours so its not easy but as Librarians we really should be good ad it!
26 June 2007 at 12:16
Dumpling said…
Yup, I joined LinkedIn too a few months ago...and have done absolutely nothing on it since!
I don't think I can be a grown-up yet! ;-)
26 June 2007 at 13:10
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