Dumpling in a Hanky

I'm the first to admit, I love social media stuff. I've been on Twitter for almost 5 years, I (slightly grudgingly) eventually joined Facebook around the same time, and have played with all sorts of thing in between, from Formspring to Pinterest. However - my use of all those sites is almost exclusively personal (apart from Twitter, which is actually heavily weighted towards work-relevant networks). There's not actually much need that I can see to do anything involving social media in its current form for my own library service. I do enjoy reading about how academic and public libraries are furthering the use of their resources and exploring how to best use sites, using Facebook to inform users about events and service specifics, Twitter to respond to individuals, and Pinterest to collate interesting visual materials...but it just doesn't work in my situation. As a corporate librarian, I'm in a very different position from a public or academic librarians, in rel...

Ok, Thing 12 is looking at "the role of social media in building up networks and a sense of community." Now, I've got to say, I do love me a good social network. I've been a user of MySpace (back when it was actually cool), then moved on to Bebo, and finally, in the last two or three years, I've settled in to Facebook, and Twitter (with the obligatory LinkedIn presence, but I don't count that as part of my part of my active social network), with a steady background of blogs. The main benefit that I've gained from social media is using it to help me get to know so many professionals outside my own sphere. Scots law librarians are a small group, and our concerns are specific to the materials and data we have to work with. They can overlap when we work with UK issues, but otherwise, we're focussed on what we need to do to deal with our own needs. Making contact with non-Scots law professionals, and regularly interacting with them has led to me making s...

Okaaaaaaaaaaay, Thing 6 is it then! Of the various networks suggested, I'm a member of Facebook, LinkedIn, LISPN, and CILIP Communities...please note though, that there's a big difference between me being a member, and me actually participating in all of these! I have to confess up front, that I don't ever actually go onto either LISPN or CILIP Communites. LISPN I signed up to when it was first launched, as I wanted to help build the momentum to get it going, and be involved, but it moved way past me needing to be there as an encouraging body long ago! Also, it's not really a network that I feel I need to be actively involved in at this point - I feel I'm at a stage in my career where I'm experienced, established in my role, and happily settled in my workplace. This means I'm not greatly in need of the resources available there, which are more suited to those moving to/from library school, first/second/third jobs/contracts, and trying to establish pro...

The Facebooked-one is King. So what happens if Facebook boots you off? This woman is finding out...and has gone to some lengths to get her account reinstated, rightly or wrongly. It reminds me of Judge Judy : "The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final. This is Judge Facebook."

As Andy from Little Britain might say..."don' like it". The like-that-I-don't-like is the Facebook "Like" button. It's fine and dandy in its natural habitat of, well, Facebook. It's the best apathetic way to show people you care about something, with minimal effort. But when it's used outside Facebook, by third parties, it's not so snazzy. I had followed a link to a page that was talking about the business uses of being able to place the Like button on external websites. It explained that when you click on the button on those websites, that action (e.g. "Jennie liked x page") gets fed back and posted on your profile. There was also a Like button at the foot of the page, if you felt like trying it out. That was fine: the page was interesting, relevant, and I was happy enough for it to be posted in my news feed that I'd liked it, so I clicked the Like button at the foot of the page to test it. Sure enough, it fed back to my profil...

So, the imminent death of Bebo has been announced. I say death, as it seems unlikely anyone will want to buy an ailing social networking website in an English-speaking market dominated by Facebook . I was on Bebo. For a while. Then I remembered that I hate people who talk in txt spk (vowels are there to be used, in my world), and witter mindlessly about drinking, and clubbing, and shopping. I grew out of that long ago, but it seems to be the main reason for Bebo's continued existence. Being on it feels like a teenage contest of who was more drunk / spent more money / plastered more makeup on / fell over more. Hence me deleting my account some time ago (along with my MySpace one). And I'm retreating from Facebook more too: the effort to hide the endless updates from games that people are playing is annoying; I don't need it to suggest friends for me, or patronisingly tell me to help other people find friends; I don't want to play games endlessly - I work; I don't ne...

For entertainment, I sat and graded the ads I was getting for 15 mins again, refreshing them to see what would come up to replace what I'd marked as 'irrelevant'. The results, from their headlines: Rachel Ray diet (twice), 1,000,000 people can't be wrong (Pink Patch ad, this one is particularly repetitive, 8 times out of 12 this replaced an ad I'd removed by rating it irrelevant!), the Pink Patch diet (same as the other one, but different format...this company must have an impressive advertising budget), Floristry courses at Bournville College, the GI patch (yet another diet offer!), free Samsung Tocco, Poor history credit card (multiple), Call worldwide for a month (some sort of phone plan), free PS3 with T-Mobile, Home in Cyprus and Greece, Instant payday loan, free Samsung Soul, Jobs in Oxfordshire (twice), Want a PS3 for £10.92? (auction site ad), The best of Dagenham, A few drinks tonight? (don't know what this advertised, had website link but I didn't ...

Have you noticed the little 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' icons underneath those ads that appear (in new-look Facebook) along the right hand side of your screen? Facebook allows you to rate these adverts, as shown in the text of the popup displayed below: Tell us what you think Why didn't you like this ad? Choose reason: Misleading Offensive Pornographic Uninteresting Irrelevant Repetitive Other Thanks for your feedback. Over time, this information helps us deliver more relevant ads to our users. I have been studiously grading the adverts I get over the past few days, marking almost all of them as either 'uninteresting' or 'irrelevant', and actually, the amount of ads I'm now seeing for 'miracle diets' (wow, there's an incredible range of insane diets out there!) , debt management companies, 'free' stuff, ways to live like a celebrity, fundraising as a mother (why that one for me? I don't have kids, unless I've got rea...

I was allowed out last week (yes, entirely unsupervised! Well, apart from Lorna...) to attend a free Society for Computers and Law event on " Facebook and Social Networking Sites: Cyber-Stalking Paradise 2.0 " Yes, I'm a sad geek, but hey, t'was free! The presentation was by Professor Lilian Edwards, who was an entertaining and informative speaker. The lack of inbuilt privacy in Facebook wasn't new to me (I'd been in and fiddled with the settings to 'lock down' my profile only to approved friends, and block some people from finding me almost as soon as joining last September), but the discussion of why the site is so 'open' was something I'd not really thought about before. Facebook was set up to be open, to allow social groups comprised of school years with school issued email addresses to network, and act as an online yearbook. Which was fine when those were the only people using the system, but when it was opened up to general use, there...

I've been getting these emails occasionally from FaceBook over the past few months, and been deleting them, but...I think the whole concept of this email is wrong (and misspelled - gossips?!?!): Do you know any gossips about your friends? Your other friends may want to hear it. (Gossip is always anonymous, never appears in notifications, feeds or anywhere else where the author could be identified.)  *list of friends names* To check out gossip about you, or other friends not listed here, click here What the Social Profile application wants you to do is post anonymous, possibly untrue information about friends and acquaintances, and allow others to see that. Surely there's some issues here with libel? If anyone can 'publish' unsubstantiated information about others, under the guarantee that it'll never be traced back to them, which Facebook will then distribute around its system? Hell, maybe I'll start posting anonymously about affairs friends have had...

I finally weakened and decide to see what was going on with Twitter. I joined in January 2007, but never used it, as I didn't know anyone else who did, or ever would. But now, I do know people who use it...perhaps it's finally reached critical mass for me? There's no guarantee I'll actually make much use of it, but it seems more interesting when there's people you're interested in posting on it. And it's letting me rant about my crappy day while my boss isn't there to hear it... I'm a Luddite, but I'm also always willing to change my mind if I can be persuaded of the usefullness of things! I was going to say it's like the opposite to my Facebook account, in that it's workmates only, whereas Facebook is friends only, then realised I've got a bit of crossover of both on Facebook. Note to self - the next social network you join needs to have a way of separating out groups and allowing them only a certain amount of access to you. "Wo...

So, as I continue to get pop-ups on Kongregate asking if it's ok to publish what games I'm playing in my Facebook feed, I decided to try and find out how to turn off Beacon...which I didn't even know was turned on. It seems to only be doing this because Kongregate is an American partner site. It's in there, in the Privacy settings. If you want to do this too, go to: Privacy > News Feed and Mini Feeds > Actions on External Websites > Tick box marked "Don't allow any websites to send stories to my profile." Save changes.

So, I was sent a link to a fun game, Chronotron. I was playing away, getting past versions of myself to work out puzzles, when a little pop-up appeared on the bottom right of my screen, saying that Beacon was telling my friends I was playing Chronotron on Kongregate, before sliding back into obscurity. So I went over to Facebook, and sure enough, that information had appeared in my profile! This is my first encounter with Beacon, and needless to say, I don't think my friends want to know when I'm playing a game on a totally separate website, so I disabled it immediately. But I didn't know that Beacon was activated, or affected UK users? Maybe I need to find out more about it, as who knows what else it'll be informing my friends I'm doing on other websites!

If it appeared to come from Facebook, and just asked you to confirm your name, date of birth and email address? Or would you give an old school friend your eBay password? Apparently, those details were enough for scammers to steal money from individuals who'd been perhaps a little too forthcoming with personal information on social networking sites. It does seem that they were perhaps using some of their personal information that they also publicly shared as passwords, but still, how much do you trust Facebook and similar sites? Would you be as wary about clicking links in an email that appeared to come from them or giving personal info as you would if it came from a stranger? Do we now trust these sites more than banks, to the extent that an email from them must be authentic and reliable?

I find myself spending less and less time on Facebook recently, and most of that time is spent looking at notifications, and clicking on ‘ignore’, because I don’t want to join the Oregon Trail, or allow my friends to buy and sell me.. . A large part of the problem is applications that insist you invite friends (generally at least 20) before you can see your results / scores / what other people have said about you. If I add one of those applications, and it demands I invite my friends to play too, I just exit, and uninstall it. I like my friends too much to bombard them with invites every time I decide to while away some time playing a quiz! It seems even Facebook themselves have finally realised that the amount of invites / notifications to play whatever game your friends are playing at the time is statring to get ridiculous. I noticed today that this information has appeared in my News Feed: Too many requests? We've added a "clear all" option for when you have ...

So, if you advertise on Facebook, you'll fall asleep in minutes, and sleep soundly through the night? Wow , what a selling point!!

An article in The Guardian discusses " Facebook whales" , individuals with more than 1000 'friends'. I personally have currently got 42 friends, all of whom I either know in real life, or know of professionally. I'm polite and add people that ask, if I know them, but if I don't really have any interest in them, I delete them a few weeks later. I can't even begin to imagine how you would try and manage that size of a network (allegedly, humans cope best with a network of between 100-200 individuals), and to be fair, Mr MacLeod does actually admit that he doesn't read the news feed. Which leads me to wonder why he uses the site, if it's not for keeping up with the activities of the people he's interested in? Is he just friend collecting for the show-off element: "I've got SO many more friends than you, I'm so much more worthwhile"? Anyhoo, I'd definitely like Facebook to develop a way to turn off certain peoples feeds, or c...

Well, they've responded quickly , as usual...do you think their motto's a variation of Googles? "Do only the evil you can get away with, but if anybody's upset, fix it"? Not really so snappy, but they do seem to be quite quick with their responses to issues...even if it was an odd concept in the first place. I'd go nuts if a site decide to share what items I was buying, and where, with a loosely connected network of friends, colleagues, and people-I-went-to-school-with, who-don't-understand-that-there-are-good-reasons-we-lost-touch....

Facebook's the place to be , not MySpace any more...I still ain't joining!! :D