Facebook v. Myspace (Thing 18)

I already have both Facebook and Myspace accounts, but they are personal sites I use for communicating with friends, and I don’t feel comfortable sharing my links here.

Myspace is already a thing of the past for most social network users. The common belief is that Myspace pages are used to sell products and promote bands, and Myspace friend requests are almost always someone trying to get you to promote their band for free or catch your interest in adult services. As both a Facebook and Myspace user, I see far more adult entertainment spam on Myspace than I have yet on Facebook.

While some younger users feel that Facebook is going to be the next Myspace let-down now that anyone can join, it still gets heavy use. Since I see Flagler College students’ use of campus computers in the library, I can gauge how much time is spent on Facebook versus Microsoft Word.

I like Facebook better than Myspace because of the tools it brings together. I can watch my friends’ activities and updates as they scroll across my home page in real time, I can check and see who is online at that moment and chat with them in real time, and I can join groups that express my interests.

Groups that I join are often created by my friends regarding an upcoming event, where I get requests for social club meetings that are coming up. I also seek out and join political groups that reflect my concerns, especially during this past presidential election. It was probably pointless to say “Christine supports this presidential candidate,” but at least I felt like I was doing something.

Ultimately, Facebook has been the social meeting ground that Myspace tried clumsily to attempt. Myspace required blogs to broadcast information, and posting notes to friends was so cumbersome that it took days to have a simple online conversation. Facebook is probably on the verge of becoming obsolete as its newer better replacement rolls out, but, for now, it’s the place to be.

RSS concluded with LOLspeak (Thing 4)

I can’t stop rewriting this post because for some reason I keep sounding unprofessional. Writing about my blog consumption turns on my texting slang aggregator. Maybe I con-text-ualize myself differently because I mostly read my friends’ blogs, and I tend to speak in an ultra-casual OMG way with them. (We never say LOL unless we’re being really sarcastic, by the way. LOL is so passé.)

I read blogs socially. I know I should be reading something like the Daily Kos, but I’m usually reading my friends’ blogs, especially “A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette.” Online networking like Facebook is great, and I use it almost daily, but keeping up with blogs that publish sporadically can be challenging. RSS-ing my friends gives me the freedom to see what they’re up to when they’re up to it.

Although I’ve had blog followers on my own private blog, and although I know how to insert an RSS feed option into my blogs, I had never actually done it until Thing 4. And, as far as putting all my friends in one place, I had never used Google Reader before. Now I’m discovering, “Hey, look, I can see you all together at once!” Google Reader is like my own little coffee house.

I also learned a lesson the hard way. I thought I’d be cute and put a subscription to one of the gossip websites I read occasionally on my Google Reader. Within milliseconds my aggregator was overfilled with a million posts. I discovered that Google Reader saw my gossip site as a series of individual posts, not one cloud under the name of the site. Oops. Although I stopped my subscription to the gossip feed within minutes, I can’t figure out how to get the headlines out of my inbox! Now I know to seriously evaluate the website in question and decide how it will affect my inbox.

I know this is the “wrong” answer, but, for the short term, I’m using RSS in Google Reader for my friends and for the handful of “23 Things” blogs I’m following. In the long term, I need to evaluate which library sites are of value to me and subscribe to those rather than hunting them down sporadically.

I’m also envisioning a with-it, jargon-filled library blog aimed at clients that includes an RSS feed. I’m teh win cause I no LOLspeak like bebeh kittehs!!1!1!!!

Search for the hula hoop blogs! (Thing 3)

I started my blog search with Technorati. I chose the topic “hula hoop” because I make and sell hula hoops. I was disappointed at first because I got a lot of Wii fitness results, but as I looked closer, I found a couple of interesting blog links, and I found a section on hula hoop videos. As a hula hoop professional, I was familiar with a lot of the websites Technorati retrieved, but these were high quality sites that I know give reliable information. Kudos to Technorati. I see how relevant those results would be to someone new to hooping. If I hadn’t known of those sites before, I would have clicked them first and discovered a whole network of hula hoopers.

I tried for Opinmind and Sphere next, but neither had search functions. They were aimed at tools for bloggers to improve reaching their target audiences and maximizing hits and sales. Disappointing.

Google blog search was kind of disjointed, but I learned that Michelle Obama likes to hula hoop-- a fun fact. Again I got a lot of results for sites I already knew.
I gave Advanced Google blog search a half-hearted try and excluded the term “Wii.” I got some pretty odd results from casual bloggers who were just mentioning in passing that they liked adult sized hula hooping. As I read their testimonials, I found I liked those results because they added a cute human dynamic instead of hula hoop advertising gimmickry.

Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me (Thing 1)

Or at least watching my IP.

Already a blogger, I took NEFLIN’s challenge of adding features to my blog. The first has been to add Google Analytics, which I highly recommend. Google Analytics offers a free service to track number of visits to your site, which posts visitors looked at, and how long they stayed on your page. I put the link to Google Analytics on the right over there under “Sometimes I Help” so that you can get started with this tool too.

I also have another suggestion to anyone who might be new to blogging: don’t write your post in your blog’s edit window! I write all my posts in my word processing software of choice so that I can edit and spell check easily. I find those tiny little post windows of Blogger and Wordpress cramped and annoying. I want to see my text run free on the screen in Microsoft Word! Additionally, I name my blog file and do a “Save As” right away and click the save icon several times as I write. This way, I know I’ve got back-up should I magically find the perfect button combo that deletes all.

Can’t wait to network and learn more about my fellow Web 2.0’ers!