LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Spring 2010)

From looking over the MySpace and Facebook library pages in the week 6 lecture, one thing is clear: any library that wants to have a presence on a Social Networking site must make a long-term commitment to maintaining the site.

You don't want a MySpace page with a blog that hasn't had a new entry since 2008 or a wall that's full of spam or links to your website that are broken. Better to have no site than to have a sad orphan site.

It looks like the Facebook pages have generally fared better. I'm not sure if that's because Facebook pages have generally been established more recently and therefore not had as much time to fall into disuse or because Facebook is just a better site for maintaining an active, interactive presence. I've also noticed that, for public libraries, Facebook pages tend to serve the entire population while MySpace pages tend to be more teen-oriented. That may mean that the MySpace pages tend to get less in the way of staff resources.

One thing I've noticed is that the parts of the MySpace pages that tend to still be active are the feeds from other sites like Twitter. If a library is going to have a presence on more than one social networking site, it's very important to have them all share the same postings as much as possible. Twitter should feed into Facebook, MySpace, and the library's own website. The same for Flickr and YouTube. RSS feeds from the website should be available in some form on the social networking sites--well-integrated if possible but as links if nothing else. Blog postings and events on the library website can be posted to Twitter as titles and shortened URLs. The ideal would be to post a status message, blog item, event, photo, or video once and have it propagate to all the library's social networking sites. That keeps the repetitive work to a minimum and allows your library staff to focus on the unique aspects of a given social networking site and to respond to posts and messages from your library's patrons to keep your social networking presence as interactive as posible.

With all the new features, apps, and widgets for integrating feeds from one social networking site to another this synergy among sites should be doable and a big help to maintaining a commitment to multiple social networking sites.