Here’s how I’m using my social networking tools these days.
When I first registered for del.icio.us I imported all the bookmarks from my browser and then didn’t use it for a year. I didn’t really need all those bookmarks so I cleaned things up by deleting them all. I also cleaned up and consolidated misspelled tags. I went back to all the links I’ve posted over the past 6 months and added the name of the source (newspaper, website or blog name) as a tag in hopes I can look back and see which sources I can recommend as reliable, or at least interesting. I may go back and retroactively add in all the articles from the many link-of-the-day posts in this blog.
In the process of entering (almost) every book I’ve ever read. I don’t actually own many books but I’ve kept lists of what I read for the past 18 years. I also hope to use it to rank my favorite books of all time. I may also try cataloging my son’s collection of children’s books just for kicks.
Some strangers asked to follow me right off the bat, so I followed them back which was fun for a day or so. Then I was overwhelmed by the minutiae of their daily lives. I’m eagerly seeking to use this as a professional development tool by following librarians who tweet about ideas and activities in their jobs and libraries. So from now on I plan only to follow librarians as well as non-librarian folks I already know.
I’m also using Facebook to play lots of games of Scrabulous, WordTwist, and Scramble which I guess proves that Facebook is a valuable social networking tool for wasting time with your friends.
Panorama of the Mountains 