Myspace and Facebook

Facebook


Mastics has 131 fans on the facebook page.


Other libraries that have a presence on Facebook are Hampton Bays Public Library, Patchogue Medford Library, South Country Library Children's Department and more.


There is nothing that I feel we are missing from our page that I can think of. I think that we are featuring all of the important aspects of our library. That is until the new page setup takes over and all of the hard work gets put into tabs.

Myspace

The main library myspace page has 16 friends and the teen page has 12 friends.

Two interesting elements on the site are the Ask the Librarian and the Shelfari features. I also like the calendar option but it was never working when I looked at the page.

Experience

I have had a pretty good amount of experience with both myspace and facebook. The two pages are similar because they are both social networking sites that allow you to meet new people and to keep in touch with old and new friends.

They are different because Facebook started out as a networking site for kids that went to college. You had to belong to a school in order to sign up. That is why myspace became so popular so fast, anyone could use it. The other difference is that even though myspace asks for your full name hardly anyone gives it. They all use screenname type names. On facebook you have to use your real name or you have to come up with a name that sounds like a first and last name and then other friends have to be able to find you. Also on myspace you can see a little more about a person before you befriend them. You can see a larger size of their image and hopefully you can figure out who the person is. On facebook you can only see a super small picture and find out what friends they have, then maybe you can make a connection to them.

Although I have been mostly using facebook, I like myspace better. I find that myspace is more user friendly for non-techy. It is a much easier point and click interface. Facebook I mostly use now because everyone has shifted from myspace to facebook and they are not signing into myspace as much anymore. I have found that facebook is so difficult to make your page unique. I liked seeing everyones personality show in their myspace pages and now facebook kinda took that away. Plus I really would rather hide behind a screenname in todays society. There are so many carzy people out there and now they know my full name and any other info I share. On myspace they had to do a little digging. Also I find that the facebook gods change their minds like underwear. Can they just settle on what they want their site to look like and leave it be. Instead they keep moving things all around and causing problems for all of the applications that people spend time creating. I just don't get it!

I think that social networking is so hot right now because it gives us away to keep in touch with people without having to bug them, call them, or even meet them. I know it is great to be able to keep in touch with my long distance family. I get to see pictures of friends weddings without having to ask. Its great! I think that it is a great tool for libraries because people can check out what is going on without having to stop in. Hopefully they see great things and that makes them want to stop in. Also if they are not able to come to the library we can still be a part of their lives. It makes our patrons ahve a "friend" connection to use.