Module 7 Social Networking

Social Networking is huge. There is so much out there for keeping in touch with your friends or making new ones.
I have to admit to being a little resistant to joining a social networking site but I have finally made the leap and have now joined facebook and discovered my friends can be endless. Friends from your childhood, college, old jobs, current jobs, family - the list goes on.
With this module we had to compare different social networking sites. As most of my peers seem to use facebook I started there. It was easy getting started and it didn't take too long to find my way around the site. However I'm sure there's much I am still to discover and I hear the games are a real time waster.
I also joined up to Bebo and MySpace. Although I think these sites are more for the younger age group I did love the way you could personalise your space with different skins and customize the designs. I also really liked the timeline in Bebo where you could add events and photographs. I have had some experience with the Ning as we used it for the Baby Rock & Rhyme group. It was good in the respect you could set up special groups for people with similar interests.
As I am new to social networking I did not find one site any better than the other to negotiate around. Although unique to their own site they did follow similar formats. It was just a matter of learning your way around.
Privacy issues was a concern for me when using these sites so it was good to see different levels of privacy - from the whole world seeing to just your friends. You can adjust the level of privacy that you are comfortable with. I would however still be very careful what you put up.
The benefit of facebook for libraries could be huge as can be seen in the number of 'people who like this' for WCL and I'm sure this will only grow. It's a great way to get things out to our customers.
Once again I have had fun learning all this stuff and I will see you all in cyber space!