Big isn't always better

As Miss Jean Brodie so wisely said, 'Seven inches is quite enough' - though ostensibly she was talking about the appropriate amount to have the classroom window open. Sorry, off the point.

On ITN this morning, the news that Facebook has attained its 500 millionth member - 8% of the entire planet are on it. Maybe a Cam23er was the 500 millionth, maybe one of us will emerge unsuspecting from our place of work, we thought to the sandwich bar, but instead into our 15 mins of fame, faced with a baying press pack 'How has Facebook changed your life?' 'Are we headed for a double dip?' 'Who's going to win Big Brother?'

'Is social media a fad?' said 50% of all internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook, and Social Media Revolution 2010 said users are spending an average of almost an hour a day on Facebook. Perhaps the reason I dislike aspects of Twitter and Facebook so much is that [in my opinion] they are just too big. They have strayed dangerously from their original ethos and business interests have weasled in. As Carol says, Facebook is pretty much the perfect resource for those who are removed physically from family, friends and colleagues, and it has most of the bolt-ons you'd want for that function. But now it is so dominant, we are even being asked to believe it can operate as a creditable search engine.

Wouldn't it be interesting to stand up in front of a new group of students, show the Facebook page and say, 'Here you go kiddies, this is all you need'...? Am actually considering doing that, just to see the reaction [if they are awake, of course]. Then I'd have to do the Alvy Singer thing 'Ah, if only life were like that'.

Having a library page on it is fine - or has to be if everyone else has one - though perhaps a lot of effort to create and update a good one, for possibly little return. [The libraries listed in the 'task' have made a fine job of their Facebook pages, but it's awfully difficult to get away from that 'busy' look]. Who exactly would the audience be? As Lottie says, we have to be careful how we pitch it. Moonhare has reminded us that the LSE study mentions that some students resented libraries muscling in on their social circle. Dad-dancing again, but harmless [not like big businesses, anyway].

I attended a JISC workshop 'Maximising Online Resources Effectiveness' a couple of months ago, and could see their argument that for most universities [sic] a presence on many platforms is probably necessary. We were referred to a study that apparently demonstrates that the "words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web" in 2009 were Twitter, Google, Facebook, iPhone, youTube. Nota bene, children, "words" as well as "brands". Obama was no. 6, Oprah no. 42 [arguably the latter at least also a brand], but the rest of the top 50 were all brands. Hmm, do I detect something ... stinky?

Remember the presentation from the launch of Cam23 - 'Is Social media a fad?' [We got that at the SCAMORE workshop too]. Lots of us probably sat swaying to Fat Boy Slim's specially-chosen hypnotic tones, eyes like Mowgli's when Kaa sang 'Trusssst in me', and at the end said 'Yeah, RIGHT! Let's GO!' Anyway, the presentation predicted "We will no longer search for products and services. They will find us on social media". It's a business proposition - We are being profiled, categorised, used, but we're being told we have control if we stick our little thumbs up on Facebook. I'm not saying it's all bad - just that we have to be careful about going where we're led, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's related to the 'unknown unknown' phenomenon when searching for info : do we take what's thrown at us or do we find things as well?

Nanny dearest

Facebook, oh god, where do I start? Or, more appropriately - Don't start me! Well, I am going to start, from a negative point of view, and hope that by the end of the week I've had the Damascene moment....
Set up personal and [2] library pages about a year ago, after it was clear from the User ed@Cambridge meeting that we libraries really should have a presence. Fine, bunged a few bits and bobs on, left it, with vague intentions of creating a fabulous page ... eventually [Yes, yes, I do know that's not the right attitude].
To one's complete astonishment, these totally naff pages attracted friends and fans. Now, there were some jolly nice young Turkish [guessing by the names] gentlemen who expressed admiration, and we've had some lovely absolutely-library-related activities in the Crail Memorial Library Moshpit [see photo] but ....what the heck got these complete strangers to these pages, let alone bother to say they liked them ????

Because of Facebook's perhaps necessary nannyish attitude, it is very fiddly finding things, adding things, generally keeping a handle. There's a Facebook Group for past Genetics Department members, in preparation for some upcoming celebrations. Reasonable function, right? But of course a lot of non-department members have added themselves to the Group, which makes invitations etc difficult, and not the one-click option Facebook claims. A Group would seem to be a good place to add photos of past events - again, good idea, right? Well, no, because in a Group you cannot organise them in folders [yes, this is true - there's even a petition on Facebook 'Implement photo albums in Groups' which they ignore] which as you can imagine soon makes a hell of a mess. Moreover, photos I haven't taken are represented as mine.
Nanny Facebook won't even let you add favourite books it doesn't like the look of or is too stupid to recognise. I didn't think saying I was reading 'War and Peace' in Russian was unacceptable - even if untrue - but Facebook did. Well, that's lost me a lot of potential friends, now. It let me say I liked 'procrastinating', but not 'dissembling'. Didn't spot the other lies, though, did it, huh? More seriously, why can't I be innocently silly, when Faceboook vigorously defends the right of 1,320 people to avow 'Raoul Moat is a Legend'? Furthermore, Facebook doesn't prevent me seeing splashed on my home page, without even seeking it out, what 17-year old Crail Minor and her friends are up to, in stuff-of-nightmares detail [...and I do mean detail].
And would someone perLEASE enlighten me as to what Phil Bradley is on about when he claims Facebook is an efficient and trustworthy tailored-information provider? Why is Facebook's weasling around in personal activities and preferences more acceptable than Google doing it? The thing that really puts me off Facebook [and Twitter], is the muscling-in on what was a perfectly acceptable social medium by business and other interests, on which another rant later.

Flickr as archive : The drug's don't work

Yes, this is where it all fell apart, and the fey skipping about had to stop.

It just so happens than an Important Personage had asked Miss Crail to kindly place some photos in an album, in Facebook. Some time this year would be nice. Sounds easy, sounds logical, but it turned out not to be, for a silly technical reason, and it's to do with the personal/professional split. Right, bit of an experiment - Flickr and Facebook, compare and contrast. No, Flickr cannot do exactly what is needed either, also related to the personal/professional split.

Thus yesterday was Meltdown Wednesday and not just for the heat and the football. Unhappily, toys-out-of-the-pram time coincided with some very young French interns hanging around in the library waiting for Pack Leader to show. Never mind, even if they are too afraid ever to set foot in a library in England for the rest of their lives, they will have learned some useful vocabulary. Sad to confess, Miss Crail scuttled past bleating 'Sorry! Sorry!' when she should have declaimed magnificently 'Ha! So you were wrong about the English and their bloody sang froid!'

Back to the point - sort of - Tried the help pages, the web in general, and even rushed out to the Public Library and come staggering back under a toweing pile of 'Facebook for Dummies' 'How to do everything with Facebook' et al. [Questions: How come, since these books are called 'How to do everything....' there are so many of them? And where's the chapter on 'Household chores'?] I can hear it - 'Books!!? Oh for goodness sake!'

Yes, it was time to call upon ... why didn't I think of it before? ... A Real Person!

Now, this could have been done on Twitter, but imagine all the football ... excrescences ... that would have to be ploughed through for anyone to find the question, and me to find the answer. So - the old ones are sometimes the best - a plea on ucam-lib-discuss, which the Twitterati would probably dismiss as down there with Wells Fargo. Within 10 minutes several lovely helpful people had replied, and none of that exhausting sifting and translating business. 140 characters would have been a bit of a challenge too. Sincere thanks are due to all of them, even though none could solve the problem, because what was asked to be done - can't! But those people certainly made Miss Crail feel a lot less stupid.