I am on Facebook though it is not my first foray into joining a social networking site. You are welcome to poke me if you'd like (and no, you do not have to owe me a diet coke for me to be your friend but you do have to know my "real" name)! I think the first social networking site I ever joined was probably friendster about 5 or 6 years ago. But, lacking very many "real" friends, I grew bored quickly and ceased to check my account. I moved on to myspace a few years later and found more "real" friends, renewing some fun connections to people I knew back in elementary, middle, and high school. Myspace was fun for me...at least at first. Customizing my page with layouts in fun colors, themes, and photos and checking in to see what friends old and new had been up to and were doing with their pages was the most enjoyable aspect. However, the novelty soon wore off and my checking in and updating my account there soon dwindled. Now I probably log in once a week to check out anything new my friends have posted or changed their status to. The strangest thing for me about social networking sites are all of the requests to be "friends" with people who I do not know in real life or have any commonalities with.
At one point I was friends with a number of different libraries and library systems on myspace. I was curious how these libraries/systems were planning to connect with me and keep me interested in being their friend. With the exception of one library organization, these libraries didn't do anything to connect with me beyond our initial friend-making. I was hoping for blog posts, messages, status indicator updates, or bulletins. Anything that would draw me into looking at the library's page again or inform me of what the library was up to. That simply did not happen, though I did recieve lots of requests from authors wishing to be my friend. My feelings now after about a year of hearing mostly only silence from all my library "friends" is that if a library, library system, or organization chooses to create a myspace presence, they should commit the staff and time to keep thier friends' interest and get their message out through regular posts, bulletins, etc.
I do think it would be fun (and popular!) to offer a teen program at the library with the wireless lab to show off ways teens can "pimp" their myspace pages. One could even throw in some education about online safety/privacy once there is a captive audience. I know I've heard of other libraries doing such programming and it being very successful. What about you, readers, have you tried any programs like this?
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Thanks, Jaime, for sharing your real-life experience with library friends on MySpace. That's very interesting, though I can't say I'm very surprised. That dedication of ongoing resources to MySpace or any of these types of sites seems to be the biggest stumbling block.
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