Learning how to use the social web

Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, Oh my! Keeping up with each new widget that comes out of the social web can be trying; constantly updating your status, checking comments and direct messages, adding pictures, finding friends, avoiding spam, etc. Then there is also the increased ability of our mobile phones to plug into these online networks with native social applications that allow you to be anywhere and let everyone in your network know what you’re doing or what your seeing in real time! That may a bit hard to wrap your mind around.

If you haven’t already noticed, your library has been adapting to the growing popularity of social networking tools. The Library has decided to create an online presence through this blog, Twitter, and Facebook in order to keep the community informed and enlightened. These tools provide a more interactive platform for us to communicate and share valuable information. Although using social networking can be fun, it is important to know how to effectively use these services to get the most out of them.

So in order to help you organize and prioritize your time online and content for the growing social web, here are 5 steps that may help decrease the information overload you’re likely to experience:

Step One: Why sign up at all?

• Figure out why you want to use this service and what are some of the features that interest you. Otherwise you may find yourself not signing in after the first week.

*Note: your profile still exists even if you never log in again.

Step Two: Privacy Issues – What to share?

• How much information are you comfortable sharing with the rest of the world? Remember, once you post something on the web it’s instantly published and you are responsible for the content. To keep your online identity safe and secure you must trust those to whom you connect.

Step Three: Create and Participate

• Social networking sites can be incredibly useful sources of current information. This information may be entertaining, insightful, or personal, but informative nonetheless. By sharing things that you find or create you contribute value to your online community.

Step Four: Keep your online identities connected

• The social web has brought you the ability to link your content from the different networks you may be a part of. You can integrate your Facebook status updates with your Twitter updates; if you blog you can alert others through RSS feeds, which can be embedded into Facebook; or you can send Facebook RSS feeds to the blog you may have created. The possibilities are endless.  There are even sites like http://friendfeed.com/ that aggregate almost every change to your social networks into one spot.

Step Five: Avoid online addiction

• You should monitor how much time you spend checked into these social networking sites. Un-plug once in a while. There is a great deal of information available online these days and it is not possible to get through it all at once. Practice in moderation. Your friends will still be there tomorrow!

How do you use the social web?