I Have a Space on the Internet to Call My Own

MySpace isn’t quite what I expected it to be. It wasn’t the sketchy website full of obscene images and rude opinions that some co-workers visited instead of doing their work. It took me a long time to see MySpace as a social place for many different people, some of them whom I actually knew. The main reason I eventually join was because I found out some family members and friends were on MySpace.

When I first created a MySpace account I found it extremely overwhelming. Fortunately, I had family members who read up on MySpace for Dummies and helped me set up my account. My sister even beat Tom (the MySpace Administrator who is everyone’s first friend) for the privilege of being my first friend!

In the beginning, it was exciting to search for stuff to personalize your page, add some music, fill in some background information, and search for friends. I was amazed by the fact that decorating on MySpace required searching for and copying URLs for graphics and background designs that I wanted.

I was concerned by copyright, but my friends insisted that these files were there to be used and that everyone on MySpace did the same thing. They informed me that if the owner of the designs or music removed them, then I would just look for another file. This borrowing of files to put on my page was mind boggling. Profile names could also be changed as constantly and as easily as the background, music, video clips, etc. Pure Web 2.0 in action, right?

It took me a long time to put up a profile picture or choose my URL, even though uploading the picture wasn’t too hard—just like adding an attachment to an e-mail. Keeping in touch with friends in MySpace could be pretty easy. You can add quick little comments to friends’ pages, sort of a quick message or hello that everyone else can see. For more private messages, you can send a private e-mail through MySpace to the e-mail address in a friend’s profile.

Now that I have MySpace under my belt, maybe I should move onto Facebook, where I have a different network of friends to connect with…

Socializing Goes From Hanging Out to Social Networking

Socializing isn’t about spending time with friends you made in person anymore. Now it’s about viewing the web pages of friends, real and virtual, and sending them comments. Those social networking sites that make it possible for users to have personalized web pages and have also become centers of socializing as well. When people are too busy to plan and coordinate time to spend together, they can visit each other’s pages and leave little messages or cute graphics. Friends aren’t limited by distance anymore.

My sense of the people writing these articles on Social Networking is that they probably don’t use these sites themselves. The explanations tend to focus on the dangers of online social networking, possible benefits that outweigh the dangers, and the statistics of users and user activities. Really, the articles are dry and boring stuff that don’t really explain much on why social networking is so appealing (or why anyone would want to sign up for one in the first place).

Should the Library jump on the bandwagon? I’m not so sure. Teens might appreciate the fact that the Library is willing to communicate with them on their own turf, but if our social networking is not up to their standards, I’m not sure if they’ll feel more enticed to use the Library services. The Library needs to change with the times and we need to keep up with what our customers know. We are supposed to be custodians of knowledge, right?