What Does This Mean to Me, Laura?

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Social networking is here to stay, in form or another. I think we all get it now; this stuff can no longer be considered a fad, but is now an integral part of our culture. But that doesn’t mean that some forms or services won’t fall out of favor. Or that you won’t throw up your hands in frustration over the influx of daily minutia you might be consuming. At some point, you will likely feel the need to scale back, retool and/or disconnect from a service altogether. In this post I’d like to offer some guidelines about how to do that.

However, before doing anything, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions and to be brutally honest with yourself:

What am I running from? If you’re considering leaving a social media service entirely, you need to understand why. Are you tired from trying to keep up with all of the stuff your friends/followers create? Are there specific people you’re trying to avoid? Is the service not what you thought it would be? Before you leave and cancel an account, be sure there isn’t an alternative solution, such as dropping some friends/followers. Remember, even if you haven’t been the most active person in that service, you’ve still built some credibility and some social capital by being there. Consider carefully before you pull the plug. Rebuilding social capital can be a long (and sometimes impossible) process.
Were my expectations in line with what is possible to get out of it? If you were expecting hundreds of friends/followers after several months, the answer to this question is likely “no.” It’s not just a matter of time; if you rarely updated your Facebook status and never tweeted anything of interest that got re-tweeted or replied to by others, you weren’t putting in the work required to get all those friends and followers. Social media is just that–social. If you’re not being social (constantly, yes!) then you flunked Social Media 101. Be honest here–did you participate fully? Do you plan to in the future?

So, now you’ve decided you need to do…something. Here’s some first steps:

Take a hiatus*. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from social media. Simply announce to your friends/followers that you’re taking a break for a week or two, and not to worry if your feed goes quiet for a while. Re-evaluate how you feel about things after you come back.
Scale back what you see. Everyone likely has Facebook friends that they friended well…just because. Not because you necessarily wanted to know the intimate details of their lives. Maybe you just didn’t want to offend them. Did you know that you can actually hide people’s updates in your Facebook timeline? Paring down what you actually see in FB can make a huge difference. You can also do the same for Twitter. Someone posting out of a conference every 2 minutes and you’ve had enough? Put them on Twittersnooze. These methods are low-to-no-guilt and give you a little peace.
Scale back your friends/followers. This is a more drastic step, because you risk offending others and/or losing social capital**. Unfriending people on Facebook is a tricky proposition. Although the unfriended person gets no notifications, chances are that they are not stupid and are going to realize fairly soon what you’ve done. If you’re planning to pare down Facebook friends, it might help to explain that you’re only keeping immediate family and close friends and not work acquaitances or some such, to minimize the backlash. Many people have mixed both work and personal lives in Facebook; sometimes this can cause discomfort later. Separating out your lives is a valid reason for paring down. That doesn’t mean you won’t offend anyone, unfortunately. As for Twitter–it’s a little easier to stop following on Twitter. Overall, Twitter followers are more ephemeral and less likely to have a close connection to you. If you stop following someone on Twitter though, be aware that it is likely that they will return the favor.

Canceling a social media account is, undoubtedly, the last resort. If it’s a personal account (for you, not your library), it’s probably better to just let it lie unused. Everyone kind of lags on keeping up with things, and if you come back to it later and pick up the pace, people will understand. Better to let it lie fallow than to burn the field.

If this is a library’s account, it’s not as simple. If the only friends/followers you have are other libraries/librarians, the account wasn’t doing what it should have been doing anyway–reaching out to the public. If you have patrons, then you have to decide if the account is worth reviving. Could your library be doing more with this account? The answer is almost always “certainly.” But do you have the time to invest in it? Social media is time-intensive. To pretend otherwise is self-delusional. If there isn’t staff time to maintain it, it might be best to let it go.

However, with a library account, under no circumstances (that I can think of) should it ever be canceled. Why? That namespace is priceless. If you let that account be deleted, then someone else can come along and grab “XYZ Library.” This is why I tell libraries to get social media accounts, even if they never use them. Protect your library from brandjacking whenever possible. If you don’t plan to maintain that account, post a message to that effect and give folks info about which social media services you are maintaining.

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*Those of you who know me on Twitter and Facebook know that I attempted to take a social media hiatus a couple of weeks ago, before the whole Ohio library budget thing happened. Then my life got eaten by social media. Timing is everything.

**One of my next posts is going to be on social capital, I promise. It’s an extremely important part of social media. If you don’t have it, you’re just about dead in the water.

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openid One of the most common complaints I’ve heard about using various web services and social networking sites is the need for multiple accounts; multiple user names, multiple passwords, multiple things to forget. Who hasn’t used those handy “Forgot your password?” links at least once (or fifty) times?

The dream of many web users is the idea of having only one account to sign into multiple services. (Nope, you’re not the only one to have thought of it.) One mainstreamed answer to this need has been OpenID. This allows you to sign into multiple web sites with just one set of login information. OpenID is already in use by Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Yahoo, Plaxo and other major players on the social web. But you haven’t heard of it, you say? Unfortunately, OpenID has been tied up by several issues for some time, including branding discussions and poor usability. It’s here, it’s in use, but apparently it can confuse a lot of people.

Another entity has solved the usability problems: Facebook. However, their solution is closed and proprietary, an internal solution that doesn’t use the OpenID platform. This means, firstly, that you have to have a Facebook account to use it and, secondly, that it doesn’t play nice with everyone else using the OpenID standard. However, their solution is much simpler. Sites that are using Facebook Connect for logins just offer up a big blue button that the user clicks, and then signs in with their Facebook login information.

While OpenID is more available (at least for now), it can be confusing because it allows you to login to a site by typing in a URL, rather than a username/password combo. The site then references that URL to get what it needs to log you in. In addition, many people already have an OpenID and don’t know it. Chances are you might be one of them. Already have an account with Flickr, Blogger, Wordpress.com, Yahoo or a host of others? Then you already have an OpenID. Surprise! If you don’t have one but want to get one or start with another identity, go to MyOpenID.com.

Several high-profile web sites will shortly begin using the competing Facebook Connect service, including Digg, Hulu and Discovery.com. There is already speculation that, if OpenID doesn’t work out the kinks, that it may never catch up to Facebook Connect.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

If you require users to have accounts and login to something that is compatible with OpenID (e.g., a Wordpress or Blogger blog), it would be a good idea to enable OpenID for those users who choose to use it.
While Facebook Connect is probably easier to use, it is still dependent on the user having a Facebook account. It also is part of a closed ecosystem that does not work with OpenID.
Keep a close eye on these over the next several months; I’m betting there will be a clear winner by the end of 2009.
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“Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” (Official definition.)

I think most people have some idea of what Facebook is; I, myself, have often described it as the classier cousin of MySpace. Love it or hate it, Facebook is incredibly popular, and not just with the college set (anyone can join now, if you haven’t heard). TIME magazine pointed out last year that Facebook is more popular than porn. A quote from the TIME article:

“When you can reach all of your friends through Facebook or MySpace, there’s little reason to spend time in your old-school inbox.”

Chances are, you already knew that email is for old people. Instant messaging (IM) is but one of the replacements with the more recent generations of netizens. Now, we have to contend with all kinds of social networking (AKA “Web 2.0″) sites, and Facebook is one of the kingpins. So, should libraries be paying attention?

Yes and no

Will it hurt to create a Facebook profile for your library? Very unlikely. But libraries need to understand that they will be, to some extent, unwanted. Ryan Deschamps of The Other Librarian says:

“So let me start with the Facebook library search application. It is fine, but my opinion is that few people besides librarians are going to add the applications to their profiles. The technology is Web 2.0, but the strategy is still Library 1.0. Why? Because the model is still, “I am librarian. I can help. Come to me (ie. my Facebook page) and I will serve.” The applications, though offering marginally better service for little cost, are not taking advantage of what Facebook offers its clients.” (Source)

And Casey Bisson writes:

“I’m going to avoid the question of whether libraries should be trying to offer services inside Facebook, and instead ask the question of how well our existing services work for those using Facebook. If students are collaborating, they’re likely sharing URLs, but our OPACs and databases often aren’t bookmarkable, making it difficult to exchange links to those resources (and instructions like these don’t help either). And if somebody blogs about one of our items, our catalogs don’t support comments or trackbacks, making it a one-sided conversation. Facebook and other online services are important to our patrons, and we would do well to think about how information is exchanged using those technologies. We would do well to build services that interoperate with the internet that people are using.” (Source)

So, not many libraries are providing anything in Facebook that users want. Our resources are inaccessible to the Facebook multitudes. Apparently libraries don’t “get” how to really fit into Facebook culture. So why bother?

I can answer that in one word: findability. Sometimes, half of life is just showing up to the party. Maybe you don’t get to dance much, but at least people can see you made the effort to get dressed and show up. A few years ago (and it still holds true now), many small businesses were madly scrambling to get a basic web site up on the web. Most didn’t have shopping carts or even professional layouts. But these businesses quickly realized that, if they didn’t have any web site, they were essentially invisible to modern customers. I believe Facebook represents a similar scenario. Libraries might not have cool widgets or apps, but we need to show up and put in a little face time (pardon the pun) with the net communities.

So, what does this mean to me, Laura?

Your library should probably have a Facebook profile.
Put a little time into it. Check out reading-related applications like Visual Bookshelf that show what you’re reading. Contribute reviews. Maybe challenge your patrons to a little Scramble match to up their vocabulary skills.
OPLIN has a Facebook profile (and yes, we dig Visual Bookshelf). You can find it here. And we’re even giving away OPLIN pieces of flair. (If you don’t get the reference, you’ve got to watch Office Space. Really, you’ll love it.) Want to be our friend?
Facebook is known for it’s mindboggling assortment of apps. It’s like being a kid in a candy store. You can add games, widgets for charities, you name it…somebody has likely already built it. Yes, free.
There has been some controversy over privacy in Facebook profiles (although they have made strides). This really shouldn’t affect a public library very much, if at all, since everything we do is open to the Sunshine Laws anyway. But be aware that the controversy exists.

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