12th May 2008
Social Networking: How I choose to share, or, Cuz I ain’t no Follow back girl
When I present about social networking, I approach the state of harping on how each site and technology has a culture, with a population, etiquette, mores, and all the other social trappings of any culture. Users are attracted to specific social networking sites usually because something in the culture speaks to them. True social networking site participants — regular daily visits, active participation, constantly in touch with contacts — are “residents” in the culture, not just acting, pushing the buttons, or going through the motions, but really fitting into the culture.
I tend to be pretty selective about which sites I use, because I only use social networking tools that I really need. I’ll create an account on a new site, fuss around, check out the help, see who else is using it and why, and then decide if I want to pursue adding contacts and otherwise integrating it into my everyday digital life, or keep it on my mental shelf as a possible solution for something else later. Sometimes just a review from a trusted source is enough to tell me whether or not a social networking site is for me.
Once I’m there, my habits will depend on the site. I basically have different layers of stranger and privacy tolerance on different sites, and I tend to stay pretty true to the purpose, and culture, of the site, and my purpose for it.
- Twitter: I’m most likely to follow people I don’t know, or don’t know very well, on Twitter. My stream is open because the point of Twitter is sharing. Everything I say on Twitter is no-regrets, honest, and something that I would say out loud anywhere. I respect the right of people to lock their streams for whatever reason, but I feel it’s counter to the culture. I used to add locked streams all the time, but now I tend not too. I automatically block spam streams (all links, only there to advertise/pimp/push some site or service, no real interest in relationships, only half-duplex in content), so that I don’t appear in their following list (which helps deter other spammers), and they can’t try to add me again.
- LinkedIn: I only ever add people I can actually vouch for professionally. This means I know you, I’ve known you a while, I’ve worked with you, seen/appreciated your work, and/or I have some other evidence that you are a trustworthy source for *professional* networking and referral. I don’t add people who I’ve just met, who I’ve never worked with, or based on reputation. It’s a professional space, and I take it seriously.
- Facebook: I add friends. Actual, real, dyed-in-the-wool *friends*. We know each other, we’ve met, I like you, I want to get to know you better. You call, you write, you care. We might even get together on occasion, if it’s geographically possible. We have somewhat common interests, or differing interests that I find intriguing. It’s personal. It’s not about professional networking, business card adds, third grade classmates, numbers, or random people.
- Flickr: If I like your photos, I’ll add you as a contact. Pretty simple. You get family or friend status if you fit into one or the other. I do lock photos as I see fit, and for some of my photos, geotagging can only be seen by friends and family, or only by me.
- Yelp: If I like your reviews, if we’re friends, or if we hang on a regular basis, I’ll definitely add you as a friend.
- del.icio.us: I have a small network, but it’s mostly because I don’t talk about my del.icio.us account much. I don’t add too many people proactively, I will add people reactively if I know them, or if they have really interesting linkage.
The simple point is that I don’t use these sites to find people, or to make friends with people, or to network with people. If it happens, it happens. However, overall, they serve as forums to interact with, or to foster relationships with, people I know. Also, it varies on how well I know you, because I’m not a perfunctory about relationships.
After every conference, I find that I receive a flood of add requests, and they always seem to be on sites where, generally, I’m not going to add people I’ve just met. After every conference, I want to write this post, and it just doesn’t happen for one reason or another, probably because, despite the many requests I receive, a post like this just seems so self-serving and egotistical. Truth is, I prefer to get to know people, and if you have my business card or my blog address, you can send me an email, tell me about yourself, and we can take it from there. Sometimes I get busy, and it takes time, but what real relationship doesn’t?
I finally got off my butt to write it because I’ve got a new account on Brightkite, a site that takes the Twitter microblogging concept to a whole new level by adding more robust geographic locating features, and allowing for cross-posting to Twitter. (Honestly, I think it would be totally hot to see some partnership between Brightkite and Yelp, so that there can be an update on an event’s page to see which Yelpers are there, but that’s just an idea.)
The same way that geotagging is sometimes personal, and I don’t give out my exact location on Twitter if I’m alone or at home, I’m going to be very selective on Brightkite. It behooved me to finally get around to explaining why.
Tags: me, socialnetworkign, userbehavior
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Good post. I’ve been writing about this at length lately. A friend of mine calls me “eccentrically counter-cultural” precisely because of how I manage my Twitter and Facebook friends. BTW, I think it’s called Brightkite.
I’ve also been thinking about this stuff of late, and I’m fascinated by hearing another person’s take on it. It may even prompt me to write up my own!
Greg »
It’s true, it’s Brightkite. I’ve been making that slip for days now verbally, despite seeing it spelled correctly — and constantly — on Twitter. The URL is correct, at least.
This is what I was talking about way back in February 2006 in my On Tagging People post, the one that no one seemed to get. It’s the intention that I’ve always used to approach these technologies and venues.
I find it frustrating that, of all the people I network with online, I seem to have the most issues with librarians. There’s a huge human/culture behavior understanding gap, and not only is it frustrating, but it’s professionally embarrassing. I’m doing my best to educate, and I’m glad that there are librarians who are doing and trying and whathaveyou, but at a certain point “at least their trying” doesn’t cut it. That point was a year ago at least. Swimming upstream is becoming more tiresome than I can quietly tolerate or diplomatically navigate.
laura »
I’m glad that you’ve been thinking about it! You should totally write about it. Furthermore, everyone should read about, and talk to people about how they, *especially* non-librarians, use things online. To make a sweeping overgeneralization, librarians are entirely too insular about these things overall, and tend to sort of make up their own rules about how these things work instead of really examining and adapting to the culture.
In my perfect world, I’d explore this as a conversation with individuals, or in groups, instead of as a blog post. As, say, a small ooVoo or Yahoo! Live discussion, or even a small group chat on Skype. Or even, dare I say, a 3-4 person email discussion. I see entirely too many things communicated as “I have a problem with you/this thing/Establishment X” as blog posts, with no evidence or exposition that said issue has been addressed directly to the “you/this thing/Establishment X” in question. So really, I didn’t want to do it this way, but since it addresses a bigger issue of culture, not a beef with a particular person/place/thing, I found it acceptable.
“tend to sort of make up their own rules about how these things work instead of really examining and adapting to the culture”
Of course, I’m guilty of this, but my current strategies are an adaptation of sorts. However, I waffle on them constantly. I grapple. I wrote in my blog about one-way intimacy and how I wasn’t looking for it on Twitter or Facebook. That’s still largely true, certainly on Facebook, but it doesn’t mesh as well with the Twitter culture. And I get that.
I just don’t want to broadcast to people who have no interest in interacting with me. It’s the “no real interest in relationships” thing, but viewed at a more one-on-one level. Locking down my tweets helps me to gauge that interest on a case-by-case basis, albeit imperfectly. It’s not really that I care about the privacy of my tweets (you’d have to be pretty naive to think anything was truly private). It’s more about seeing who wants to follow me and giving me the opportunity to feel people out. The more I think about that though, the more it seems like I could still accomplish that with my Tweets not locked down.
I’m also currently following everyone who follows me and that would probably have to change if I opened things up.
So you’ve got me seriously rethinking it. Yet again. Harumpph.
@Greg: It’s kinda funny. So many people ask, “Why on earth would you do that?” or “Why do you tell people what you’re eating? Who cares?” when it come to posting on Twitter. At the same time, people asked “Who wants to look at your random photos?” when Flickr first launched, and look at it now.
Twitter really is just you broadcasting to the world. It’s the random nature of the beast. The magic is that, eventually, if you pay attention to it and really use it, the chaff separates itself out, and you see who is interested in you, who posts @ and DM messages to you, who remarks on things you’ve written in other places, who adds you because someone else they follow follows you. Then, you can evaluate and decide who to follow back. It may seem like it’s just 140 characters of instant communication, but it really does become about people and relationships, and you need to cultivate it. True, the spammers have arrived, and that’s annoying, but as we can see, apps are being developed to deal with that the same way there are spam apps for blogs. Hurray open source Twitter fans!
Digital culture is such that people blog, tweet, podcast, tag, share bookmarks, and post photos online, knowing that there’s no guarantee anyone will be interested. People do it because it makes them happy to share for whatever reason, with the simple confidence and belief that it’s worth sharing. Chances are you’ll have at least one fan out there
. Understanding the culture and privacy mores of each tool helps people understand *where* it’s appropriate to share *what*.
OMG, “I ain’t no follow back girl” is brilliant. Yours? Could I use it in Shelf Check, if I loudly and linkedly give credit?
@Emily Lloyd:
As far as I know, yeah, it’s all me. Feel free to use (my blog is CC licensed, after all ;D)… loud and linkedly credit is always awesome!
[...] others, Meredith at Information Wants to Be Free and Andrea at Library Techtonics, who has had a few good posts recently about how she uses social [...]
Hi Andrea:
I’m just catching up with your post now. Great work! I should write something similar for my blog audience. I find it especially frustrating that my colleagues are willing to connect on facebook, where they think they have privacy, but refuse to take part in online discussions especially in the blogs. When I speak to groups now, I challenge them to leave comments. It frustrates me that people are so scared and so reticent to post anywhere outside of a listserv or facebook. And I *know* they are reading along because they tell me when they see me in person. Maybe most librarians are kinesthetic learners, they have to see me in person to be able to respond? Dunno….
@Connie Crosby:
“I find it especially frustrating that my colleagues are willing to connect on facebook, where they think they have privacy, but refuse to take part in online discussions especially in the blogs.”
It kills me that so many librarians don’t get that Facebook privacy is very relative. Or, alternately, that it’s not necessarily appropriate to contact a colleague on every social site.
I also have a similar bone to pick about librarians commenting on blogs. We run into this problem on the PLA Blog all the time, trying to get public librarians to share their thoughts and reactions, which, frankly, is like pulling teeth. When we do get responses, more often than not it’s via the email form, not on an individual post. It’s a reflection of the industry group: I can’t make an interactive space if the users don’t want one.
I’m really excited to see the 31 Day Comment Challenge creeping it’s way into the library blog world, although I’m interested to see how many librarians will actually comment on blogs of a) lesser known librarian/library bloggers, and b) blogs outside of the library sphere. I make every effort to comment every chance I get on any blog post where I have something to say, and I’d love to see more librarians, as responsible internet citizens, do the same.
“And I *know* they are reading along because they tell me when they see me in person. Maybe most librarians are kinesthetic learners, they have to see me in person to be able to respond? Dunno….”
I see it as culture reflected in user behavior. Depending on who your readership is, you may have a good many people to whom what you say is new and interesting. Talking to you in person is something they can totally do, and it’s easier than, say, learning how to comment on a blog post (although it’s really not that hard), or posting a response that the whole world is going to see, and possibly judge. It’s like trying to get librarians to edit Wikipedia or something… whose permission are they waiting for? And how else will they learn if they don’t just try it?
With any other user group I would accept it, but because it is my colleagues who are supposed to be “up” on technology, I find it particularly frustrating. It is difficult to get a good conversation started amongst peers when I get individual, personal comments.
Nowadays when I talk to library groups I challenge them to comment on blogs. I keep hoping they join in the discussion.
With the 31 Day Comment Challenge, I think those of us taking part are already the converted.
@Connie Crosby:
“With any other user group I would accept it, but because it is my colleagues who are supposed to be “up†on technology, I find it particularly frustrating. It is difficult to get a good conversation started amongst peers when I get individual, personal comments.”
I’m *so* not saying we should accept it. I can see why it happens, but being able to see that is a far cry from making it OK. We should be up on technology, and it’s a sad thing that, as a profession, we aren’t.
“With the 31 Day Comment Challenge, I think those of us taking part are already the converted.”
While I kind of agree, if this is the case, then what do we do? What’s the next step? How to we get librarians to actually comment on the blogs that they read, even if they don’t have one of their own? How do we get librarians to participate effectively and with understanding of culture in the social software world? When I give talks, I do talk about the culture of these places, about how hands-on participation is the only way to learn. Given that the “not converted” librarians will only change when given the choice of a pit of lions and a river of alligators, what would be the best challenge to get librarians doing these things?
Hmm, that sounds like a blog post… might hafta get on that…
I kinda think that librarians are asking themselves these questions, too. There are a few “but how?” posts I’ve commented on from librarians who want in, but don’t know how to take the first step. 23 Library 2.0 Things is a good start, but beyond that, it really needs to be in the everday. Makes me think of an idea I had a ways back that I shared with a few people… might be time to release that tidbit to the world…