Having had s
pent hours and hours (on a Saturday night!) going through Bebo, Facebook, Myspace, I now realise why I don't have a page on ANY of these social networking sites. They take up SO MUCH OF YOUR TIME!!! I don't know how people keep their pages up-to-date!
Not willing to have to create another login I decided to browse through the sites. For sites that I wanted to know more about I used hubby's login to access them..... I also talked to various friends who use these social networking sites ALOT for their opinions and reasons why they use it.
The most common answer was they use Bebo and Facebook to keep in touch with friends and families overseas. (ok, so it's nothing you or I haven't heard before...!)
Had a look at Bebo. Gosh there's lots to do there! Logged on using hubby's login and it was so busy. All these people who have sent requests to add them, do I accept, think about it or don't ask again.... and then theirs applications to be added and comments with hearts..... it just went on and on.... (I think I deleted half of hubby's requests to add.... totally by mistake of course..hehehe!)
But one good thing is that my cousins in Japan has just created a Bebo page for our upcoming family reunion- so that's cool. Everyone in the family are asked to go in and fill out their details on where they sit on the family tree. And to add any information about our great grandparents etc.... so that's pretty cool. My only problem with it is that the bebo page is public and EVERYONE CAN SEE IT!
So then I had a look at Facebook. Much more to my liking. Maybe it's the age thing! It's simple, no clutter and not as busy as Bebo. On Facebook everything in terms of layout/design is the same where as in Bebo you get to change the skin of your page.
One of features on Facebook that I found great was the ability for the user to create their own FAMILY TREE. A family tree in the true sense of the word as in a proper family tree. So definitely a feature which might be better than the current one on Bebo.
Had a look at Auckland City Libraries Bebo page as well as Tupu's page, Rotorua Library and Birmingham Public Library. Also visited the Hennepin County Library page on Facebook
Myspace was interesting. Came across some well known Samoan song artists as well as not so well known ones and some dance groups which have pages on there. I've never been to Myspace before I had to do this exercise.
All in all - this has been a good exercise, so good that I considering creating an account on one of these social networking sites. Woo hoo!
Nine weeks and 23 exercises later... its all come to an end. WEB 2.0 training has made me more aware of things that are currently out there in terms of web 2 technologies and applications and some of these applications have great relevance to my work and for libraries in general. 
