new face for facebook?

"No longer will Facebook consider itself merely another social network. Instead it is becoming a technology platform on which anyone can build applications for social computing." Fortune magazine writes...

By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
May 25 2007

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/fastforward_facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007052511

"The short version is that Facebook is taking its two major assets - its 24-million-members (growing at about 150,000 per day) and its strong technology underpinnings - and making them available to all comers.

"We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so you can run full applications," Zuckerberg told me, saying it would be analogous to the platform that Microsoft Windows provides for developers."

Why blog when you can Twitter???

I have been hearing about Twitter for a few months but couldn't make sense of what it is exactly. That is why I was excited the come across "Moble Instant Messaging Meets Social Networking: Twitter-A beginner's guide.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/social_networking
/twitter-instant-messaging-mobile-messaging/
twitter-a-beginners-guide-20070425.htm

Here is what I learned Twitter is about:

• short messages (fewer than 140 characters)


• "micro-blogging" or "micro-publishing"


• Many options for using: Twitter website, IM, SMS from cell phone or a desktop client


• People are using it for lots of different purposes including sales and news


• People love it or hate it

I might give it a try....

The idea of social software building blocks

From nForm (http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block) and others showing an interesting way to view different social softwares based on seven factors:

• sharing
• conversations
• presence
• identify
• groups
• realtionships
• reputation.

Some of all, most have some.

the idea of "social scholar"

Here is a post I came across with a librarian explaining an idealized form of scholarship--using social software and web 2.0

http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/2007/04/social_scholarship_on_the_rise.html

Here are the first four:
1. A social scholar contributes to the conversation about her research topic by discussing her findings and ruminations on her blog and by inviting comments. By doing this, she moves some of her research activities into the public arena.

2. A social scholar initiates or joins an online community devoted to her topic, using any of a number of social software services or tools.

3. During the source gathering phase of her research, a social scholar shares important citations by depositing and tagging them on academic-oriented bookmarking sites such as Connotea and CiteULike.

4. By placing items in social bookmarking sites, a social scholar takes an interest in and contributes to the phenomenon of soft peer review. This type of peer review derives metrics from content on social sites and user interactions with this content.

5 weeks to a social library

I participated in this free course aimed at librarians. The session I helped with is in Week 5 and is called "Library 2.0? No, thank you! Obstacle to Creating a Social Library" with Melissa Prescott and Plamen Miltenoff.

Go to: http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/

Description: "Five Weeks to a Social Library is the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. It was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will be taught using a variety of social software tools so that the participants acquire experience using the tools while they are taking part in the class. It will make use of synchronous online communication, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many small group IM chat sessions made available to participants each week. By the end of the course, each student will develop a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library. "

state of social networking slide show

From Business Week: Innovation
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/07_11/B40250711innovation.htm

Slide Show: The State Of Social Networking
The novelty of MySpace may be over, but companies are collaborating on the Web for all kinds of practical uses
(http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/02/0228_innetworking/index_01.htm)

Squirl...social cataloging?

Have a collection of the weird or totally unusual or totally usual? Here is a new tool that will let you catalog every item (just a like a librarian)...

http://squirl.info/

Facebook as a reality on campus

Facebook: A campus fad becomes a campus fact
The social-networking website isn't growing like it once did, but only because almost every US student is already on it.
By Cristian Lupsa Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

"Soon to enter its fourth year, Facebook has matured into a warehouse of school information, a big-time player in campus activism, and a mirror of university life - good and bad. More than 12 million users are signed up.

School officials, most of whom were either dismissive or unaware of the phenomenon, are now awake to it. They hold Facebook-themed conferences. They sign up themselves. They monitor students. And they worry about information in student profiles, especially after hearing that employers routinely check them."
Read more at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1213/p13s01-legn.html

Do you facebook?