The Many Faces of Facebook

In all honesty I've held a bit of a dislike for Facebook in the sense that for me anyway, I found it somewhat unnecessary. That was my own bias because I saw it only from the social relationship point of view. I had seen it only from afar as a librarian and an internet user who had little need for that kind of product. I'm not always the type of person who likes to broadcast what I do and who I am and since I'm engaged I certainly don't need a relationship site. Of course at one of my jobs I'd see how so many people at the internet computers around the library would be posting and playing around in facebook and wonder why is this site so much more popular than many others.

At least after this exercise I can see some of the reasons behind it, especially in terms of how its not just a site to meet friends and discover groups, it's way more than that. It is a true social networking site, it is a tool to not only meet people but to reach some of your target audience. As a librarian, I could see facebook as a useful tool to reach one target audience (academic students) in much the same fashion as ask-a-librarian chats and roving reference do now. Plus, since Facebook is set up with target networks and groups such as colleges like Nova, you can easily log into the Nova network and find other students and faculty who also have facebook pages. Plus, on a professional level it is another way to communicate with not only your co-workers, but at least find people or groups who have similiar interests and ideas (in my case: other librarians and literature and film lovers). I will say I'm still pretty new at navigating around in some of the web and library 2.0 tools, but if anything Facebook is a pretty good example of at least seeing the value in something that previously I had found more annoying than useful.