Comments on: From yesterday through January 4…

By: walt

walt — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:50:49 +0000

OK, I’m convinced.

I’ve set up a friendfeed account, waltcrawford

After looking at the list of 81 suggestions I got for subscriptions, based on my Gmail contacts, I really couldn’t figure out which to choose–so, to start out with, I’m only subscribed to the LSW and ALA Midwinter/Annual rooms. I’ll add subscriptions based on people suggesting them directly (or subscribing to my feed) or, little by little, seeking out a few of “the usual suspects.”

Fuller post coming later today. And maybe rethinking my lack of initial subscriptions…

By: Iris

Iris — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:39:32 +0000

I have really nothing to add but thought I'd throw in my vote for FriendFeed, too, as the option that seems like it would most suit your needs. If you decide to go that route, try installing Greasemonkey and the Better FriendFeed script. It makes the screen easier for me to scan. Also, become adept a clicking the "hide" button and then (if the thing you hid is in a category of things you never want to see again) using the "hide more like this" option that appears. It's a life-saver. But yeah... What Steve and Laura and Dorothea said...

By: Daniel Cornwall

Daniel Cornwall — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:53:06 +0000

My friendfeed account is set up using alaskanlibrarian. I really like the LSW and librarianology rooms. I feel like such an LIS geek right now.

By: Daniel Cornwall

Daniel Cornwall — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:39:21 +0000

I have to say that the comments I’ve seen so far are prompting me to try FriendFeed, as much I as resist adding new social networks. But four out of five librarians can’t be wrong, can they?

By: laura

laura — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 03:38:59 +0000

I’ll echo what Steve says: for what you want, I think FriendFeed with the “best of the day” feature (and, even better, the ability to hide all the stuff you’re not interested in — some people may be interested in what others have in their Netflix queues; I am not one of them) would I think provide you with some social/professional interaction that is mostly interesting and not overwhelming. Facebook is sort of my social network dumping ground: I have a lot of “friends” there, but I rarely look at the place, and it produces a lot of spam/bacn/etc.

I’ll mention as well that I came over here to comment because Steve left a link to it on FriendFeed. I check in on the social parts of my social networks during the holidays, and library blog reading has become far more a professional activity than a social one.

By: Sara

Sara — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 03:17:57 +0000

I’d say Friendfeed definitely yes, and Facebook definitely no. I’ve been on Facebook for over a year now and I am just about ready to delete my account there — it’s become far more visual spam and ads than content, and the library groups there just aren’t active enough to be worth attention.

Friendfeed, on the other hand, is simple and clean. As Steve suggested, the “best of day” will give a nice snapshot of the most active conversations. And you can syphon off certain “friends” or rooms (like a very active Scoble, maybe) into separate lists so they don’t clutter up the main feed in your Home list. I only use Twitter to post from my cell phone (which is also Virgin ).

By: Dorothea Salo

Dorothea Salo — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:34:40 +0000

I ditched Facebook after the Beacon ridiculousness showed that it has zero interest in an intelligent privacy policy. Friendfeed hits the sweet spot for me; I can semi-hide what I post there, I don’t have to see stuff that doesn’t float my boat, and lots of my friends are there.

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:26:28 +0000

I recommend FriendFeed for “conversational intensity.” My advice is that you set up FriendFeed and subscribe to the usual library suspects’ feeds. Then–if you are wary of the time-suck aspect–try using the “best of day” feature every afternoon or evening to see what has been going on and drop in your two cents. You will see that some blog posts that got very few comment have actually sparked a discussion on FF. Also helpful for blogs like Caveat Lector that don’t have comments enabled.

For whatever reason I find Facebook rather irritating. I don’t like the walled garden aspect and I don’t find that the people I want to talk to are really conversing there. I use it more as a rolodex, helping me keep track of people I know only very casually.

Twitter is Twitter. I haven’t ever used it on a phone, but that seems to be its main appeal these days, and its something that (as I understand it) makes it unique among the three sites you mention.

By: Daniel Cornwall

Daniel Cornwall — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:57:48 +0000

Happy early anniversary to you and your wife! We do a low key season ourselves. We’ll be getting together with friends tomorrow and probably New Year’s by ourselves. On the menu for Christmas — Salmon, Halibut and potato sausage. Not “typically Alaskan”, but not totally out of place, either.

If you’re coming back to social media, I’d personally suggest just picking one tool to start off with. And I’d choose Facebook. Why?

It makes it easy to highlight stuff you want to highlight. Three things I do are:

1) Establish free “fan pages” for cherished projects.
2) Import one blog into my notes that get shared with friends.
3) Use the facebook bookmarklet to highlight pages of interest.

I could see you plugging in the PLN RSS feed into facebook as another publicity channel. If people like what they see, then they can post it onto their own profiles.

Another reason for thinking about Facebook is that it has a well established librarian community. Just check out my friends page. Most of them are libraries. Plus there are many “fan pages” for libraries, including the Egan Library in Juneau and librarian oriented groups.

If you’re into it, you can also post pictures and videos and I’ve seen librarians do that for conferences.

There is also built-in chat, which could help collaboration once you build a network of librarians.

The main drawback to Facebook for me is all of seemingly mindless applications. But that is what the ignore button is for.

Just my $0.02.