Many of us are using social networking to keep in touch with family and friends, but there are also a number of professional organisations and networks who are starting to make use of these tools. For this exercise we'll be concentrating on Facebook [FB].
If you are already signed up to Facebook you can follow this exercise now. If you aren't then I'll give you some things to think about before you make your first steps into social networking.
If you have a FB account
In this exercise, we're going to look at finding out information and contacts relevant to your work context, so we'll see which organisations and companies have a presence on Facebook. these are a little like personal profiles but are run by organisations. By linking up with these pages and group you become part of a virtual conference networking session; you can meet other users and find out who else you know is interested.
Here's some useful information about organisational presence on Facebook ...
As well as personal profiles, there are Groups and Pages. The difference between the two might help you decide how you want to link up with an organisation.
- Pages can only be used to represent a real person or organisation. They can only be set up by an official representative of that organisation or person. FB say that they are designed in order to maintain a distinction between the personal and the professional. You can become a Fan of a Page, by clicking the Become a Fan button.
- Groups can be set up by anyone on any topic - so they may be about an organisation, but not necessarily run by them. Some groups are open to all, others need approval before you can join. Looking at the details will tell you about the membership criteria.
- Login to Facebook
- In the search box at the top, type in National Library of Wales
- Look at the top two searches and decide which is the official one and which one isn't.
You can join the group or become a fan if you want to!
Next steps
Have a look for an organisation or issue relating to your work. If you want to, become a fan or join a group.
If you don't have a FB account
If you aren't part of Facebook, you may wonder what it's all about - or maybe you have decided that you don't want to share your personal life online. If you're in the first category, then you might want to take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc whihc is an introduction to social networking in plain English - it's only 1min 48 secs!
If you do decide to join Facebook, you should make sure that you think carefully about the privacy settings when you start out - there are lots of settings to make sure that only the people you want to see your information see it ... Also, have a chat with some Facebook users to find out what they get out of using it.
Your thoughts
If you have followed the FB exercise, tell us (by commenting on this post), what pages or groups you found. Also, you could also let us know what it is that you find useful about using the site.
If you aren't a Facebook member, let us know what you think about social networking - are you tempted to give it a try?
Kate/Mary - Quizdom survey - I guess you would have expected to get more people not using Web 2.0 things than people using them at a Training Hour introducing them, as people who are into this a lot won't have been here.
ReplyDeleteJ.
What's the point of twitter - it seems teenagers don't use from the report written by a teenager I read in the Guardian because it costs too much, most people are not famous enough for other people to want to know what they are doing, so is Twitter in fact only for the rich and self-obsessed or for the celebrities
ReplyDeleteI do not want to use any social networking methods as I think they can waste time and be intrusive. I may be wrong here but even if privacy settings are set high I have heard that there are loop holes via any friends you are associated with within FB. Correct me if I am wrong.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to Twitter, I have recently monitored Tweets posted at two recent conferences and I found all of them a waste of time. Tweets like 'Hi I am at a talk about X it's cool (or rubbish)'. Well so what and who cares.
I also find it annoying when people are tweeting or similar during sesions.
I wonder if we will have any time to do actual work wen we have WWW, E-mail,mobile phones (inc texting) FB, Twitter.et al.
I suspect social networking will grow but I have yet to be convinved that they are a valuable work tool. I can see they could be used for information purposes by IS but we already have well established methods and I think that students like to keep their social networks just that, for socialising.
There may be uses for SNs that I have not thought of for work purposes but they should be fully justified before we embark on a plethora of provision which can create a support nightmare.
Having said all that it is a thought provoking and interesting dabte.