Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Stick Thingy 21: Beyond MySpace

If only I had more time on my hands I could see myself really getting into the Minnesota Readers group on Gather and becoming a real mouse potato! I liked the Ning site too. Facebook and MySpace have some appeal and some of the other 23Thingers have mentioned Live Journal which also sounds interesting. But so far the only networks my family and friends have invited me to join are Plaxo (which the PC Magazine writer compared to a yuppie bar--you wake up the next morning with a hangover and a handful of business cards from your new best friends whom you never want to see again) and the even more obscure WAYN ("where are you now" which seems to be off the professional radar). As a music librarian, I was intrigued by last.fm but am not really sure I want everyone to know what I'm listening too. My tastes can be painfully eclectic and I end up listening to a lot of things I don't want to listen to because of patron's recommendations and complaints. You should see the kind of things Amazon recommends for me based on my recent searches! But that is another post. I am interested in social networking as a way to create communities of readers, or listeners, or friends. We have Senior (citizen) Techies classes and workshops at our library--it would be great for them to have their own network to share photos and tips. But getting support from administration and then finding someone with the time and expertise to maintain it aren't so easy. I am looking forward to attending the Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference in May to hear the keynote speaker on "forecasting the future of social computing."

I keep forgetting to mention that I haved added over 200 books to my Library Thing library and am now a lifetime member! Maybe LT will be my social network, though at this time it is more a catalog of the books that I own and/or want to read or have read.

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