A sense of community

So this weeks Thing is about social media, one of the good developemnts of Web 2.0?

I personally think that social media is a mixed blessing. The advantages are obvious and well discussed, for example: communication, online communities, usability, speed, access and so on, plus being online can take away some of the pressure of a face-to-face meeting as no one can see you blushing. However, there are numerous disadvantages.

Disadvantages of social media
The main disadvantage is that it is so time consuming, I now have too many social media accounts and get email updates from several of them which simply clutter my hotmail which leads to more time filtering out the potentially useful or interesting ones and following them up. But, whenever I contemplate deleting one or more I am then faced with the dilemma of which one? I need Facebook to keep in touch with my friends. I need Twitter to keep up with my professional people I'm following. I need Librarians as Teachers Network as I want to be a librarian. I need LIS NPN to keep up with new professionals to see what we're all going through in the quest to reach our dream jobs. I need LinkedIn since it's supposed to be a top place that employers look when checking out your professionality and rates high in Google search results. How do I cut these down? How do I overcome the fear of missing something if I leave a network?

I am also concerned about the relaiblility/accuracy of the information available. Anyone can set up a blog or make a post on one of these sites and there is no noted professional who checks this. This is a problem inherent on the internet, where is the peer review? A lot of information is presented as fact rather than the opinion that it is. Academic publishers have items peer reviewed so you can assume that a book or article has been reviewed by someone in a position to point out any errors or points of contention, not that this means the content is 100% accurate but there is a level of competence assumed of the authors.

Another irritating disadvantage is the crap that I am faced with on Twitter, everytime I log in I am faced with someone who feels the need to tweet about where they are, what they're eating, what they're watching, when they're off to bed and so on. Why anyone thinks their life is so interesting as to tweet every single last detail is beyond me, I feel like shouting at them to shut up, do something interesting then tweet about that! My main complaint about Twitter is that I may be following someone who genuinely tweets about things which I find interesting but then feel the need to tweet some random stuff.

Ok so rant over. I'm hopeful that when the semantic web is in full flow that better searching/filtering will mean that I won't have to waste so much time filtering through unwanted information, then all will be well.

Contact?
CPD23 has enabled me to make contact with existing contacts in different ways, for example, I now follow several people who I  know professionally on Twitter. I haven't yet made new contactsand am finidng that quite difficult. I am spending a lot of time trying out these social media and trying to find posts which I find interesting that I don't feel that I have time to foster new contacts, I hope this will change and believe it should in time and with some more effort on my part. This is definately something I need to work on.

Use of social media for career development
I had dabbled previously, I set up my LIS NPN account last year them promptly forgot about it as nothing much seemed to be happening. I had joined LAT after attending a Librarians as Teachers event organised by CDG and UCR. I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter, i'm not sure that i'll ever really like it or use it consistantly. The only social media which I have made a notable effort with is Facebook, I have joined several relevant groups and often look at their pages.

Is there really an online community?
I think that for professionals who are interested then there is an online community, but for the rest of us it's kind of hard to break into. I'm not an expert yet, I  know I will be one day because I'm working hard towards it. I feel quite intimidated by these highly knowledgable people who are posting and so far am working towards the courage to actually join in an online discussion. It's kind of good for lurkers like me who can dip in and out and pick bits up where I can but I need to work harder to get to the stage where I can truly benefit from social media.