Social networking sites and your library career

Abstract:

This chapter provides an overview of social networking and social media; it highlights the phenomenal growth in the usage of social networks and provides evidence that these growing networks are changing the face of online communication. The chapter emphasises the need for LIS professionals to participate in social networking while being aware of some of the issues. The chapter identifies three social networking sites: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and provides some first steps for LIS professionals to get started on exploring the career uses of these sites.

Key words

career

Web 2.0

LIS professionals

librarians

social networking sites

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

Social networking overview

If you work in libraries and information services and are not already using some of the social networks, you are probably slipping behind your net-savvy colleagues and the Internet active public–at–large. In the latter years of the past decade, social media sites such as Twitter have gone from hosting the fringe activities of geeks to being part of mainstream social media activity. Despite the media attention given to social networking, you may still wonder what all the fuss is about, and what role, if any, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter can play in your career development.

In this chapter I provide background information about the growth in social networking and put this into a career context. I also explain the terminology and provide some compelling reasons why librarians need to take note of this important and dynamic growth area of communication technology. Finally, I look at the threats and opportunities of online social networking and provide you with tips on what to do and what not to do when you begin. By doing so you can still join the social media revolution and avoid some of the pitfalls these networks may pose in your career journey. This chapter will enable you to take some basic small steps, while you are considering your long-term strategy.

The impulse to communicate, to connect and form groups is as old as humanity. The promise of the Internet from the start was to bring about greater connectivity between people and groups in an online environment. Web 2.0 has accelerated this connectivity. Many library users, particularly those who are Millennials (those born between 1980–95), are leading the way in establishing personal profiles on social networking sites, and contributing information in the Web 2.0 environment. Whether you work in a public library, special school, academic library or information service, you will have discovered that many of your clients are totally comfortable in the online social environment. Those of us who work in colleges and universities know that today’s students spend vast amounts of time on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, while libraries grapple with how to cater for this form of literacy. Let us first look at social networking software and how it works, so we can fully understand how these technologies can help us professionally.

What is social networking software?

Social networking software was developed to enhance human interaction on the web and to enable users to contribute to and adapt web content, by changing existing content or writing new content. Some examples of this are blogs, where users write content and wikis, where users change content. Social networking puts the control with us: we become the authors. These technologies have enormous appeal as they are built around our human need to communicate. The software itself presents few barriers to the end user; it is easy to understand and easy to access. And since most social networking products are free to use at the basic entry level, their uptake has been rapid around the online world.

It is worth pausing, to look at a few social network/social media definitions that are in common use. However, as with Web 2.0, there is no common agreement on definitions. How you define social networking will probably depend on whether you work in marketing, education, information technology or elsewhere.

The Wikipedia definition of a social network service is that:

A social network service focuses on building and reflecting on social networks or social relations among people, for example, who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. (Wikipedia, Social networking sites)

American educator Ulises Mejias provides another definition of social networking software that comes close to the meaning LIS professionals could relate to since it incorporates the idea of networking and leveraging our networks, an idea that is relevant to careers. Mejias refers to social networking software as: ‘software that allows people to interact and collaborate online or that aggregates the actions of networked users’ (2005).

Now we will look at some of the different types of social networking sites. Broadly speaking there are two types: those that are centred around an individual’s profile and shared interests, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and those centred around an individual’s shared activities, such as Flickr for photo sharing, YouTube for video sharing and SlideShare for sharing presentation slides. Throughout the book I will be expounding ideas for using these different types of social networking sites to advance your career.

What is social media?

Related to social networking software is the term ‘social media’, which tends to be used by those working in publishing and broadcasting. In other words ‘social media’ has a more media-specific meaning.

Wikipedia defines social media in this way:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. (Wikipedia, Social media)

Examples of social media are blogging, microblogging and social networking generally. The terms social networking and social media are sometimes used interchangeably. I will use both terms throughout the book. Whatever term is used, the overall picture is one of unprecedented global growth in social networking and social media.

The rise and rise of social networking

In March 2010, Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at the Internet market research company Hitwise, cited statistics showing that for the first time during the week of 13–19 March 2010, visits to the Facebook social networking site had surpassed Google site visits in the United States (Dougherty, 2010 and Figure 2.1 below). This was an important milestone, which clearly shows the relentless growth in social networking. Also, in that week the visits to Facebook had increased 185 per cent compared to the same week in March 2009; visits to Google had increased by just 9 per cent during the same time frame. So while Google was still growing, Facebook far outstripped that growth in this twelve month period.

Figure 2.1 Facebook growth from Hitwise

The Hitwise market research data is based on 10 million US Internet users accessing more than 1 million websites, across more than 160 industries in the United States.

This phenomenal social networking growth is being experienced worldwide. The Nielsen Company statistics show similar patterns, with some nations ahead of the United States in terms of time spent networking online. (See Table 2.1.)

Table 2.1

The Nielsen Company statistics of global social networking usage

The global reach of social networking and the time spent online per week, per person is substantial. The Nielsen statistics reflect only the activity in ten industrialised nations. We know that social networking is growing in popularity in China, with some figures indicating that 92 per cent of ‘netizens’ (those actively involved in online communities) in China use social media. In China, the social network Qzone (from Tencent Inc.) is increasing at a similar rate to Facebook.

Nielsen statistics show a spread of users across the major sites, with Facebook predominating (see Table 2.2).

Table 2.2

The Nielsen Company statistics of social network traffic February 2010

How long can this astonishing growth in social networking be sustained? Will the bubble burst at some stage? We can but speculate. However, if and when these companies disappear, or merge, they will surely be replaced by others with a similar goal: to engage in the commerce of connecting people online. Given the key drivers of growth which I outline below, I cannot foresee any slowing down for some years yet.

Drivers of social networking growth

The first thing to notice is that the software is appealing to more Internet users in the...