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.

The Social Network(s)

So far i'm not doing too bad, I use 3 of the networks mentioned: Facebook, LinkedIn and LISNPN. Of these the only one I put any real effort into is Facebook.

Facebook
This is where I keep in touch with my friends so I have become a fan of the various professional pages on there as a way of keeping up to date the lazy way. I say lazy because I am on Facebook every day keeping up with my friends so when pages that I am a fan of updates their status I get it in my news feed, it is mixed in with my friends' updates but still I see it earlier than I would on anything else.

LinkedIn
I have just joined this today and so far do not see what all the fuss is about, I admit this is a little premature and I am hoping that with effort I may see some benefits, so here's hoping...

LISNPN
This is one which I see the most potential in, I find it easy to use, it has useful information on the site and I like the use of the forum. I joined this about a year ago and did nothing with it, purely because I'd forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned for 23 Things, now I have rectified that and will make more time for this particular network.

Mini reflection
Looking back at my attitude towards Twitter I can honestly say that the more i'm using it the more i'm liking it, I don't think it will ever be as useful for me as Facebook but I am trying with it. The best part about Facebook is that it is profersonal, I get the professional and the personal aspects of my life in one place.

So much for current awareness...

So Thing 4 is about current awareness, as a bit of a Twitterphobe (not sure why I don't like it but I don't) I wasn't looking forward to this weeks Thing.

Twitter
I signed up to Twitter when it first came out to see what all the fuss was about, it was presented to me as an alternative to Facebook, and soon came to the conclusion that I couldn't say most of what I wanted to say in 140 characters, nor did it seem, could anyone else. I personally find tweets useful as a way to have an ongoing conversation but because of the character limitation users are limited as to what is said. As a social tool for communicating this seems a bit absurd, I am a fan of Facebook fan pages where contact information is, events can be added and you can write more than 140 characters in one go. Similarly to Twitter and status updates show up in my newsfeed, I personally prefer Facebook to Twitter although I know of several people who would disagree.

RSS
As for RSS feeds, I love these! I was introduced to RSS when I attended an induction to my course presented by my librarian, one of the activities was to set up RSS feeds from online journals to my email account, this was a genius way to condense all of the searching every week into simply opening up an email. While I don't condone the lazy approach to librarianship and really believe that search strategies are vital for any librarian, I have to admit that RSS feeds cut down on a lot of search time if you are continually doing the same search, making the whole thing so much easier as the information comes to me. Subscribing to an actual blog was new to me, I follow blogs and get to see their updates in the section which shows who I'm following so subscribing to RSS feeds didn't seem important, however, I'm open to new things so we'll see how this goes and hope it works out.

Pushnote
So far I have been unable to access this as I'm using Internet Explorer, not sure whether I'll actively seek this out as I prefer to reduce the clutter on the screen rather than add to it, however, I can see the value in rating pages and think this is quite a good idea, that's all i'm comfortable saying about it without trying it out first.

Conclusion
I am a fan of Facebook, for keeping up to date with my friends and professional interests I haven't found anything that rivals it, I have everything in one place and that works for me, so sorry Twitter but I think I will probably delete my account with you. RSS feeds are one of the most useful things I have come across for cutting down search time, will have to get back to you about how useful I find it to subscribe to blogs though. And for Pushnote I am undecided as I haven't used it.