Don’t Miss These Twitter and Facebook Guides from Mashable

January 6, 2010 · Posted in Facebook, Twitter · View Comments

Whether you are teaching a class, helping a friend or just looking for information for yourself these guides from Mashable are a great resource.

The Facebook Guide topics include:

Facebook 101: The Basics
Managing Your Facebook Wall
Using Facebook for Business
How to become a fan of Mashable
Using Facebook Applications
Facebook 305:Advanced Topics

Twitter Guide topics include:

Twitter 101 – The Basics
Building Your Twitter Community
Twitter for Business
Twitter Guide Book To Go: PDF Download and Slideshow
Sharing on Twitter
Managing Your Twitter Stream

Tags: Facebook, guide, guidelines, how to, Twitter

Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

November 5, 2009 · Posted in Blogging, Chit Chat, Facebook, Flickr, Podcasting, Social Media, Twitter · View Comments

CC image use courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

CC image courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

Last week I (and many others) spent a lot of time documenting the Internet Librarian conference, photos, tweets, blog posts, facebook updates. Did the act of digitally documenting the events change anything? Did the process of lifestreaming change my (and others) behavior, perception of what was happening and memories of it. Will we remember it better or worse?

A recent article from CNN Do digital diaries mess up your brain? looks at the effects of lifestreaming. Just knowing others are watching you may change the types of experiences you choose to have, from books to movies to where you eat and what you wear.

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,” he said.

It also detaches you from what’s happening at the moment. If you’re focused on tweeting what’s happening, you’re not fully engage in what’s happening.

But recording everything you do takes people out of the “here and now,” psychologists say. Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they’re doing because they are focused on the recording process, Schwartz said.

What does that do to our actual memories of events? Memories are shaky at best even when you’re completely focused. If you’re only half there, will you remember it later without the aid of digital documentation? What would I rather have a memory of something or documentation of it to prove I was there? What if that documentation goes away?

It makes me think, I do want to be living and experiencing life to the fullest. Does this mean I’ll put down the camera, the cell phone, the laptop? I don’t know. Probably not at conferences, but I’ll be thinking hard about doing it in other areas of my life. What good is lifestreaming an experience if I’m not fully enjoying it?

Tags: Blogging, conference, diary, digita, document, documentation, documenting, Facebook, Flickr, lifestreaming, photos, recording, tweets, Twitter

How social media can hurt your library

August 26, 2009 · Posted in Best Practices, Facebook, Libraries, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Twitter, Worst Practices · View Comments

photo by DCvision2006 on Flicrk

We’ve all seen warnings and stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of status updates or photos on social medial sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

CNN is has a new one with some social networking don’ts

1. Don’t announce interviews, raises or new jobs

2. Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer

3. Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed

First I think number 2 should include – “or coworkers”, really nothing good can come of that either. But the point I want to add for librarians (library workers) everywhere is

4. Don’t badmouth your customers.

We all get frustrated, we all have bad days, I understand that, but venting on social media sites isn’t the solution and it could cause real problems for your library. Your customers may read what you wrote, they are more tech savvy than you give them credit for. In addition to some old fashioned hurt feelings this can lead to some real problems for your library. They could complain to someone at the library, which means staff will need to spend time dealing with this issue. They could email it all their friends or maybe the newspaper, this is bad PR no library needs. Or they could just never come back, which is contradictory to the mission of libraries, and loosing patrons is never good for libraries. Libraries don’t need bad PR, especially not now when so many are facing funding cuts.

If you don’t care about how it will affect your library keep in mind your boss may read what you wrote, there are endless ways this could happen. I can’t imagine a library manager anywhere being happy that an employee is publicly badmouthing patrons. There are a wide range of outcomes depending on what was said, how the library handles custom service issues, but being fired is a possibility.

Think being anonymous will protect you? think again. Think having a private account will protect you? It might, unless there is a glitch & its made public, even briefly, or until you *friend* the wrong person.

Your best plan is not to put anything online you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see. Just don’t do it. Think twice before you post that next Facebook or Twitter update or write that next blog post.

Additional Reading