myspace

I wanted to say a little more about online social networks that I didn't elaborate on in my last post. One thing that I thought was interesting is danah boyd's comment that MySpace was started by 20 something's who are into indie music because I had heard that it was actually initially populated by the queer (mostly gay men I believe) and Burning Man communities. Has anyone else read/heard this? I was also unaware of the strong teenage presence on MySpace.

Well I'm back from my holiday, and am ready to rock social software. I was pleased to see the topic for my first week back was social networks. This is an area where I have particularly strong feelings. In this case my feeling are overwhelmingly negative believe it or not. I think there is a marked difference between this kind of software and other social softwares we have seen in the course. Primarily my issue extends from the fact that social networking sites are privately owned for profit enterprises in general, and more specifically they seem to violate privacy issues with gusto.

Social Networking Online: The Hot Topics

As social networking sites are (arguably) the most well-known of the web 2.0 tools, we understandably had a wide spectrum of articles and topics this week. I tried to select a few articles that looked like they might touch on the most prevelant of concerns or issues about social networking online in order to be able to explore a wider variety and be able to think about the implications of a variety within a library environment.

Implications for relationships

So much to discuss when talking about social networking
sites – where to start?

I could not help but chuckle a little at quite a few of the articles this week.  Some of them seem to be written from an adult/scientific perspective.  It calls to mind an image of a crazed scientist holding Facebook out at arm's length, disgusted, and carefully placing it under a microscope to have a closer look at it.  I can just imagine: "WOW!  Look at all of those young people gathering around Facebook!  I must observe them!"

I believe the topic for this week is the one I am most familiar with. I joined my first online social network in early high school because ‘all the kids were doing it’ so I can identify with some of the readings concerning teenagers and online identity. Representation of identity online is important in online networking. Since my foray into it in high school, social networking has become extremely popular not only among teenagers, but among other age groups as well.

I think there is great promise in social networking for libraries – but librarians need to put a lot of thought into this one before jumping into MySpace or Facebook.