thing 18) facebook/myspace

i have accounts in both of these already. i used myspace frequently when it first appeared on the scene, but frankly, i'm sick of both of these. i hardly check my myspace page and find that the only friend requests i get come from spammers, stores, and bands. if i didn't have to plan my 10 year high school reunion, i would delete my account.

i like facebook, but find it incredibly annoying as well. i do not care that my mom is eating popcorn. i do not want you to throw a pillow at me. i do not want to accept a garden patch from you.

but, i do like getting invited to local networking events, being able to send simple evites, and look up friends and acquaintances from my past. i feel like the public is calming down on these sites and learning how to be more mature users of these applications. our users are there, so we need to be.

we need to remember to friend our patrons, not other libraries! we need to be available to answer reference questions via these programs and chat. we need to seemlessly promote our events from here to our web to print. luckily, facebook and myspace allow badges for websites, tweets can be sent to either, and blogs can be cross posted.

the technology is both useful and a waste of time for the user.

i'd rather stick to email for the time being, but can use either application for basic communication with those emails that i do not have.