reflections on the boyd articles

Wow, the two boyd articles assigned this week really gave me a lot of food for thought. My initial reaction to the question of what librarians should take away from these articles was, "uh, every word." After reflecting for a while, I think I was able to distill a few tips, pointers, and things to think about from the articles.

• The first article mentioned that many users of SNS's are daily users. Libraries that create profiles on social networking sites need to be mindful of this and update their content often to stay fresh, relevant, and interesting.
• Both articles touch on the fact that online networks often reflect existing offline networks. The first also mentions that SNS's are more often used to connect friends-of-friends than strangers. For this reason, it might be in the library's best interest to let volunteers or regular patrons know about your online presence first so that they will "friend" the library (thus reflecting an offline relationship) and their friends will see (thus introducing friends-of-friends).
• Both articles discuss the importance of image in social networks, how users can "type themselves into being," etc. The library needs to be conscious of the image it projects in its profile.
• In the first article, the importance of comments (on walls, etc.) is brought up. Discourse is an important aspect of social networking. Librarians need to consider whether they want to just "push" information on a profile page or if they also want to engage in conversation by replying to comments left by patrons (the method I might suggest based on the literature).
• Finally, when choosing an SNS for the library and creating a profile, as with any other library programming, librarians need to consider their user population.