I was first introduced to online message boards about five years ago. I always had a blast on these things, particularly with the amount of anonymity you can maintain as you’re freely speaking your mind. Sites that I joined ranged from music interest to language interest to art to video games to professional beard grooming. After a while I had so many of these things I’d get message notifications in my email to sites I had forgot my user name and password for… there were even message alerts from sites I forgot if I actually signed up for an account or not. Finally, after convincing myself I wouldn’t be a trendy little sell out for considering the stigma that is Myspace, I tried Myspace and was able to get most everything I wanted from a social networking site. It was nice to have everything I was interested in in one place rather than having to subscribe to thousands of message boards that are erratic in the amount of traffic they get. I’ve had that Myspace account for two years now… it’s flawed but after this lesson I can honestly say I prefer it over Facebook.
For this week’s assignment I joined Facebook. Like most other social networking sites, Facebook took a little practice to learn how to navigate through. I played around with all the little bells and whistles, viewed some profiles of folks I went to school with, posted some photos and all that stuff. Despite the mind numbingly amount of friend invites I get on Myspace from porn sites disguised as young women in bikinis who desperately want my friendship, I still prefer Myspace over Facebook. Myspace has less restrictions and more to offer if you’re able to deal with the spam. Facebook has very specific networks, and those networks are fairly limited in what they offer. Facebook strikes me as being more professional and probably not quite so appealing to hobbyists or amateurs.
I decided to search out Vermont Filmmakers on Facebook and the results produced a few pages of stuff that pertained very little to film making or Vermont. I find tags to be frustrating for this very reason. I’ll stick to controlled vocabulary thanks. Anyway, I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, but I’m fairly certain that what I wanted wasn’t there. Searching libraries and librarians produced many spot on hits, so I would certainly consider using Facebook for professional networking over Myspace. My interests in the Arts – music, writing, film, illustrations and so on – is better served on Myspace.
Looking at these two sites from the point of view of the Librarian in me, I think both of these site would be useful. Depending on what age I wanted to target for library services I think one or the other or both would work well in promoting events and services. Myspace strikes me as being more popular with a younger crowd, teens and young adults. Facebook would best for young adults and older. I was amazed at how great library pages on both Myspace and Facebook were that I saw. In time, I can see myself using one or the other to promote library services.
Despite the creepiness that can come from these social networking sites, I think the benefits outweigh the problems. I’ve actually made friends using these sites, a few I even ended up meeting in person. For the past two years I’ve been trying to make a short film, and Myspace was a valuable resource in networking with other filmmakers in the state of Vermont who would be willing to help on the project. If you’re curious about the movie you can click the link on my Facebook profile that will bring you to the webpage we made for the film: MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT There’s a trailer you can view, but it’s a horror movie so be forewarned that there may be some disturbing images.
*IMPORTANT AFTERTHOUGHT: Something else I wanted to mention but forgot. There are a few sites out on the web that offer tracking services for free. I use one of these on my Myspace page. This tracker will give you the location and IP address of everyone who views your page (it doesn’t give names, but a lot of times I’ve found I can figure out who it is looking at the page). This tracker is also invisible, so people who go there have no idea that I can see where they are and how often they visit. Despite the few pop-up windows I get when I visit this tracker site, it’s well worth a few ads in exchange for knowing who is visiting your page. The link to the tracker I use is: http://www.mixmap.com/
