The author mentions the "three G's of positive social media marketing" (Be Genuine, Generous, and Grateful), and this ties in with the idea of librarians earning "social capital" with their patrons ... When interacting with their respective communities via social media, they need to proceed in a manner which will build up goodwill and make a positive impression; that way, patrons will be more likely to return the next time they have a question or need help with their information needs.
For example, the author describes "being genuine" with social media as whether or not one's post "helps your core fans/friends to really understand you better and to see your personality"; I see a lot of people in the library profession encouraging their colleagues to show more personality and build a relationship with their patrons (librarians can't gain a foothold in the community if they're perceived to be anonymous face-less "drones").
Of course, the article goes on to say that it can be a "fuzzy line between giving someone 'flavor' versus giving someone 'fluff'" ... In other words, there's nothing wrong with librarians having a little fun with their Facebook/Twitter updates (it is supposed to be "social" after all), but the truth is that patrons go elsewhere for their frivolity; when they're interacting with the library, they're looking for information first and foremost!
The description for "being generous" seems simple enough ... "It's about being helpful to your supporters, participants, etc." should be easily recognizable to any self-respecting librarian (it's basically the job description for the entire profession!).
As for "being grateful", this is another area that librarians need to focus on; while it usually works the other way around (patrons are thanking us whenever we solve a problem or answer a question for them), librarians can also "pass on information from others" in the form of going above and beyond simply pointing out a reference book or journal article; that's certainly important, but we can also provide them with further suggestions and recommendations that they didn't even realize they needed, as a way of "saying thanks" for coming to the library in the first place.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Twitter: who do you follow?
Aside from Professor Adams and my fellow students, here are the organizations/persons of interest that I am currently following via my Twitter feed:
- Library of the American Library Association (@ALALibrary) - The ALA's Twitter feed, where they "respond to inquiries about all aspects of librarianship and ALA ... just ask!"
- Library Journal (@LibraryJournal) - "Library views, news, and book reviews" from the staff members of the magazine/website.
- Library of Congress (@librarycongress) - News and updates on the "largest library in the world."
- Holy Cross Catalog (@HCCataloging) - Maybe this is "cheating," but I'm also following the Twitter account I created for my library (in an unofficial capacity) which I use to highlight interesting and/or unusual items that can be found in our collection ... such as a book on the Indonesian version of "American Idol", or the "Dog Whisperer" video game.
- Awful Library Books (@awfullibbooks) - Speaking of "unusual" items found in library collections, I threw in this Twitter feed for a little fun ... I know other people have already mentioned it, but Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner have a hilarious blog featuring some of the worst library books ever (I just wish their appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was still available online).
Friday, June 10, 2011
Woman creates fake Facebook account ... & it ends up saving her life!
I'm just saying ... :)
EDIT: And now I find that the charges have been dropped, because the husband claimed that he knew it was his wife all along ... convenient.
I understand that when married couples decide they don't like each other any more, they sometimes opt for extreme feelings and gestures.
No wife, though, has perhaps expressed herself in quite as socially networked way as Angela Voelkert.
Voelkert, according to court records obtained by the Smoking Gun, decided to use Facebook to see if she could find out what was really in her husband's mind.
She created a Facebook profile for a superficially attention-grabbing teenage girl called Jessica Studebaker. Her first step was for her creation to friend her estranged husband. Her next step was to persuade a trusted friend to be Studebaker's typing fingers and to entice her husband, David, into communication.
This allegedly worked better than many might imagine. Soon, the court papers declare, David Voelkert was e-mailing his newfound Ms. Studebaker and revealing details of plans to disappear with his children.
It seems that Voelkert might be technically inclined, given that he owns a South Bend, Ind., business called Secured Alarms, some of whose customers are allegedly police departments.
So a Facebook message he allegedly wrote to Studebaker might just have tipped the balance in the eyes of the FBI. It is said to have read: "O.K. Here is the deal. I had a GPS tracker on my van and I took it off earlier, it was just installed on my ex-wife's van so I can track her and know where she goes."
He then allegedly made suggestions that he would find someone to "take care of" his ex-wife.
Source: CNET
EDIT: And now I find that the charges have been dropped, because the husband claimed that he knew it was his wife all along ... convenient.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
"Blogs, mashups, and wikis, oh my!" by Bruce Dearstyne
It's like Professor Adams said, four years is pretty much an eternity in "web time," so many of the examples cited by Dearstyne could definitely use some updating ... For instance, his description of videogame industries on the web (that create an "imaginary world where users interact and can spend real money") mentions Second Life, which has definitely lost steam over the years while being usurped in the "overhyped and heavily-touted" category by social-networking games such as Farmville.
It kind of reminds me of the book "Stealing MySpace: the battle to control the most popular website in America," whose subtitle became obsolete almost immediately after hitting store shelves ... Attempting to speculate on internet-based subject areas via the print medium (even if one uses something with a relatively "quick" turnover rate like newspapers or scholarly journals) is almost guaranteed to be a losing battle. The online world is just too "fluid" (for lack of a better term), so the "next best thing" or "latest innovation" is always right around the corner, ready to take the place of the current "flavor of the month" (or "week", or "day", or "second", etc.).
However, I did recognize the name Robert Scoble from Dearstyne's list of knowledgeable people who maintain blogs on Web 2.0 topics; he's been a guest on several podcasts I listen to, and always seems to have something interesting to add to the conversation.
Checking his blog, Scobleizer, I found the following posts of particular interest:
There was a video portion to this post (not quite a "vlog" but close enough) where Scoble interviewed the co-founder and CEO of the website Klout, Joe Fernandez, which serves its users by tracking and verifying the "influence" that a person exerts over his or her social media networks (i.e. whether or not a person's suggestions/recommendations made via social-networking tools directly influence their followers to take action and follow their lead).
This sounded like a very interesting (although inherently flawed) way to see if people - such as, say, librarians - are getting the most out of social networking sites, in terms of whether or not they are using them to their full potential; Fernandez explained that Klout creates a "social credit score" for people to measure their "social standing", based on "algorithmic [calculations] on top of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, and looking at what you do on the social web."
He also took the opportunity to discuss the site's new "+K" influence-vouching system, whereby real-world influences (not just the online component) are taken into account ... He gave the example of Person A logging onto FourSquare and seeing that Person B has just eaten at a local restaurant, so Person A tries out that restaurant himself and ends up liking it; with "+K", Person A can acknowledge that Person B influenced his decision via their unofficial recommendation, and can reward Person B by adding Klout "currency" to their "social credit score" through a tweet or blog post.
Fernandez mentioned that his advice for building influence online is "consistently creating content that your network responds to and engages with," which is a lesson that librarians should definitely take to heart (if you don't keep your blogs and other social media outlets updated, patrons will lose interest and stop paying attention).
Scoble seconded that notion, stating that value plays a big part in how much influence one exerts within their social media realm ("I looked at the value that people were providing me, [and] were they stupid cat videos or were they about the tech industry, and were they good quality or were they bad quality?") ... If users aren't getting value (perceived or otherwise) out of your social-networking content, then you become a "liability" to their information-gathering needs and they will simply ignore/unfollow you.
Also, Scoble and Fernandez both pointed out that this service has been utilized mostly by big corporations or people looking to impress potential employers (having a high Klout score demonstrates "your ability to have an audience [and] drive your content to them"), but I don't see why people like librarians couldn't use it - or some similar service - to try and calculate their level of "popularity" with patrons. For example, if a librarian helps a patron find a book that they're looking for or answers their question at the reference desk, that patron could blog or tweet about their positive interaction and increase the librarian's Klout score (which could thus influence other potential patrons to seek out that librarian via Facebook or Twitter the next time they themselves need help).
In this regard, an ability to measure the amount of influence that libraries have through social media could go a long way towards justifying the use of these tools as an essential part of the library's overall strategy for interacting with their respective user communities ... After all, Fernandez says that "every user that creates content has influence"; that includes librarians!
This post had some unflattering things to say about the current state of Google's business practices, as well as throwing out some speculation/predictions on what the company (as well as the technology world as a whole) will look like in four year's time ... The time span chosen struck me as sort of a funny coincidence, since we just saw in Dearstyne's article that a lot can change in four years, so that trying to predict how things are going to play out over that span of time is a bit of a fool's errand.
Anyway, Scoble did make some dire observations about where Google could be headed as a company when 2015 eventually rolls around, as they are currently lacking in innovatie design when it comes to areas such as nuanced social networking (Google Buzz has pretty much been a colossal failure, and Orkut has little traction outside of India and Brazil) and socially-influenced news displays (sites like Zite and Flipboard have real-time interactive news feeds available via tablets, while Google "isn't even a player here yet").
Again, it's impossible to accurately predict where current trends will lead in the future (Scoble admits as much with the statement: "Quick, what was Facebook when it first came out? 'A way to meet girls at Harvard.' You really were gonna fund that?"), but he does make the compelling argument that Google - one of the most ubiquitous presences on the internet right now - is really lagging when it comes to innovation (especially in fields like social media), and is in danger of falling behind its competitors and perhaps even becoming irrelevant as a company by 2015.
It's hard to imagine a world without Google, but it could happen!
It kind of reminds me of the book "Stealing MySpace: the battle to control the most popular website in America," whose subtitle became obsolete almost immediately after hitting store shelves ... Attempting to speculate on internet-based subject areas via the print medium (even if one uses something with a relatively "quick" turnover rate like newspapers or scholarly journals) is almost guaranteed to be a losing battle. The online world is just too "fluid" (for lack of a better term), so the "next best thing" or "latest innovation" is always right around the corner, ready to take the place of the current "flavor of the month" (or "week", or "day", or "second", etc.).
However, I did recognize the name Robert Scoble from Dearstyne's list of knowledgeable people who maintain blogs on Web 2.0 topics; he's been a guest on several podcasts I listen to, and always seems to have something interesting to add to the conversation.
Checking his blog, Scobleizer, I found the following posts of particular interest:
There was a video portion to this post (not quite a "vlog" but close enough) where Scoble interviewed the co-founder and CEO of the website Klout, Joe Fernandez, which serves its users by tracking and verifying the "influence" that a person exerts over his or her social media networks (i.e. whether or not a person's suggestions/recommendations made via social-networking tools directly influence their followers to take action and follow their lead).
This sounded like a very interesting (although inherently flawed) way to see if people - such as, say, librarians - are getting the most out of social networking sites, in terms of whether or not they are using them to their full potential; Fernandez explained that Klout creates a "social credit score" for people to measure their "social standing", based on "algorithmic [calculations] on top of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, and looking at what you do on the social web."
He also took the opportunity to discuss the site's new "+K" influence-vouching system, whereby real-world influences (not just the online component) are taken into account ... He gave the example of Person A logging onto FourSquare and seeing that Person B has just eaten at a local restaurant, so Person A tries out that restaurant himself and ends up liking it; with "+K", Person A can acknowledge that Person B influenced his decision via their unofficial recommendation, and can reward Person B by adding Klout "currency" to their "social credit score" through a tweet or blog post.
Fernandez mentioned that his advice for building influence online is "consistently creating content that your network responds to and engages with," which is a lesson that librarians should definitely take to heart (if you don't keep your blogs and other social media outlets updated, patrons will lose interest and stop paying attention).
Scoble seconded that notion, stating that value plays a big part in how much influence one exerts within their social media realm ("I looked at the value that people were providing me, [and] were they stupid cat videos or were they about the tech industry, and were they good quality or were they bad quality?") ... If users aren't getting value (perceived or otherwise) out of your social-networking content, then you become a "liability" to their information-gathering needs and they will simply ignore/unfollow you.
Also, Scoble and Fernandez both pointed out that this service has been utilized mostly by big corporations or people looking to impress potential employers (having a high Klout score demonstrates "your ability to have an audience [and] drive your content to them"), but I don't see why people like librarians couldn't use it - or some similar service - to try and calculate their level of "popularity" with patrons. For example, if a librarian helps a patron find a book that they're looking for or answers their question at the reference desk, that patron could blog or tweet about their positive interaction and increase the librarian's Klout score (which could thus influence other potential patrons to seek out that librarian via Facebook or Twitter the next time they themselves need help).
In this regard, an ability to measure the amount of influence that libraries have through social media could go a long way towards justifying the use of these tools as an essential part of the library's overall strategy for interacting with their respective user communities ... After all, Fernandez says that "every user that creates content has influence"; that includes librarians!
This post had some unflattering things to say about the current state of Google's business practices, as well as throwing out some speculation/predictions on what the company (as well as the technology world as a whole) will look like in four year's time ... The time span chosen struck me as sort of a funny coincidence, since we just saw in Dearstyne's article that a lot can change in four years, so that trying to predict how things are going to play out over that span of time is a bit of a fool's errand.
Anyway, Scoble did make some dire observations about where Google could be headed as a company when 2015 eventually rolls around, as they are currently lacking in innovatie design when it comes to areas such as nuanced social networking (Google Buzz has pretty much been a colossal failure, and Orkut has little traction outside of India and Brazil) and socially-influenced news displays (sites like Zite and Flipboard have real-time interactive news feeds available via tablets, while Google "isn't even a player here yet").
Again, it's impossible to accurately predict where current trends will lead in the future (Scoble admits as much with the statement: "Quick, what was Facebook when it first came out? 'A way to meet girls at Harvard.' You really were gonna fund that?"), but he does make the compelling argument that Google - one of the most ubiquitous presences on the internet right now - is really lagging when it comes to innovation (especially in fields like social media), and is in danger of falling behind its competitors and perhaps even becoming irrelevant as a company by 2015.
It's hard to imagine a world without Google, but it could happen!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
A perfect example of the need for information literacy in social media
I'm a big fan of The Onion, but I'm also in on the joke that all of their stories are made up ... However, that doesn't stop certain individuals from sharing those stories via Facebook and treating them as legitimate news items:
Boy, these people are in serious need of some information literacy instruction :)
The Onion is a satire publication and website. It makes fun of real news in a creative and often extreme fashion, which makes it all the more laughable when someone posts a link to an Onion story alongside some scathing comment about the state of society/politics/puppies.
We wish we could make that last part up, but we're not. In fact, The Onion seems to confuse so many online users that a blog has been set up to record instances where fake news meets real-life shock. It's called "Literally Unbelievable," and it's—literally—just that. Users submit the horrific responses their friends have made to fake news articles for publication on the site. There are no comments and no "likes" on Literally Unbelievable: Just responses the news (or the not-news).
Boy, these people are in serious need of some information literacy instruction :)
"Embracing a Culture of Connectivity"
A couple of observations from this discussion/video:
- John Palfrey (who was a keynote speaker at the NETSL conference I attended this year) mentioned that there is a digital divide, not only in terms of patrons' ability to access technology, but the skills necessary to use that technology ... This is a perfect place for librarians (especially those who work at public libraries) to step in and provide the education - for free! - on how to use social networking tools and the like
- Danah Boyd talked about how "being a participant is absolutely essential to being part of the social world", while providing a - very old? - quote from a teenager to accentuate the point ("You have to be on MySpace because everyone is on it!") ... This reminded me of a quote from Tibor Koltay's article: "People like to be where other people are." In other words, users want to be where the action is, so that they can share and exchange ideas with as many people (both friends and strangers) as possible; it's why the previously-mentioned MySpace is pretty much dead at this point, because everyone moved to Facebook! Why hang around in that social space anymore, when it's no longer actually "social"?
- Her discussion of imagined and invisible audiences was also intriguing ... Just think of the students in this class, for example; as long as our blog posts and Twitter feeds aren't labelled as "private", then anyone in the world could be reading these things. Not only that, but what about future users, ten or twenty or however many years into the future? What will they think of the ideas and discussions being brought up here?
- "I don't think Facebook is violating privacy, I think it's letting people choose how they wanna define privacy" ... No, Facebook has been pretty much called out on having horrible privacy settings that have exposed information that users mistakenly thought was being shared only with their friends; sadly, I don't think it simply boils down to educating people on how privacy works with Facebook ... All I'm saying is that the more Zuckerberg (and his advertisers) know about Facebook users, the more money they can make off of them.
"Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)"
Just for a change, I thought I'd do a "running commentary" on this YouTube video via Twitter:
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