Twitter

I have heard about twitter all over - on the morning news shows, the baseball games, the radio, in the newspaper but I don't know of anyone who actually has a twitter account so I thought "cool - I will be the first!" Signing up for the account was easy. I also watched the video and checked out the help page. Finding a twitter to follow was a different matter. I thought I had heard that the classical radio station in Dallas (WRR)had a twitter but I could not find them. I then tried our local library - no luck there either. I then tried Keller, TX and lots of different twitters popped up - none I was interested in though. I did finally find the City of Keller and a couple of others that I thought might be interesting. I don't know if I will be able to do this on my phone and checking my twitter account would be one more thing to do so I don't know if I will use it as it is meant to be used - as an instant update. And honestly I am probably not that interested in what anyone is doing on a moment to moment basis. I can barely keep up with what I have to do!!

Thing 11

Instant messaging is the one thing I have done before. When my oldest daughter went to college the cell phone coverage was spotty and expensive so I learned how to instant message and we would frequently chat in the afternoons. This went by the wayside when cell phone plans became less expensive and included the area where she was going to school. I was quite proud of myself when I went to log in and remembered my user name and password even though I set up the account 10 years ago and haven't used it in over 5 years. My user name is pastamama2 (given to me by my kids) and I am using AIM. I know we downloaded the software when I originally set up the account but I have not updated it and the AIM express from the browser seems to work just as well. The home page does seem to be much more cluttered with ads and other stuff that I find it more distracting than I remember. I do need to try to use the abbreviations more often- my kids said my instant messages read more like letters and so therefore are not very instant.
I thought the post by another North Texas 23 participant who used IM with other librarians while trying to help a patron was a great strategy.

Thing 10

I watched the tutorial about Ning and that didn't seem too complicated but then I read the article about Ning and their use of networks and that made me think twice. I wonder just how many of these social networking sites there are and it seems belonging to them would take a huge amount of time. I did search several areas of interest - libraries, book clubs, quilting, education and even for home inspection (my husband's occupation). The number of possible networks to join was overwhelming 5,000+ for some networks. Some are recognizable such as ALA and I would feel comfortable joining them but then there was the Second Life Librarians network that was not what I expected. I find it tedious to go through and view the different networks to see if one is a good match. Since I didn't set up an account I can't compare it to Facebook as to ease of use and quality of information.

Thing 9

Finding friends in facebook. This is in some ways easier than I thought it should be. I added my kids and a friend I knew participated in Facebook but when I actually typed in names of many other friends I discovered none of them are on facebook. I have had a couple of friend requests but have not responded yet - I am still contemplating how many people to include and whether I really want to include people I only know through other people or casually - some feel the more friends the merrier but I am not sure I agree. I am still more likely to send a private message than post something on the wall for all to see. I joined one group - the Texas Library Association and became a fan of the Texas Rangers. I am still looking at other groups to possibly join such as a quilters group or perhaps a book club. I think belonging to several groups or becoming a fan of several things will be more information than I want to sort through on a daily basis. My daughter says she just ignores the postings from all of the various groups she is a fan of - but what's the point of joining if you are just going to ignore it. I guess I am still not really with it ....

Thing 8

I had heard all about Facebook mostly from my kids but had never looked at it. I was a little more intrigued when a friend said she had joined and was having a great time connecting with her old high school friends but still not enough to do anything. It was easy to create the Facebook account not as easy to navigate the site - again too much information with ads and pictures and different options all over the page. I did not put a lot of information in my profile partly because of the privacy concerns but also because part of me wonders who really cares about my favorite books. It seems like such a ME generation thing - I find it hard to believe that people really want to know what I'm doing today. I did enjoy looking at friends from high school who are listed in Facebook and I discovered when typing my own name into the search box that there are 20 pages of people who have the same name. I guess this is where more information in the profile can be helpful - I may go back and add my maiden name to mine.

Thing 7

One of the reasons I started the 23 Things was to learn about the RSS feeds since a listserve that I am on is moving to RSS this summer. I am still not sure about either the Blog reader or RSS feeds. It seems you end up with so much information. I am still looking at it to see if I can delete the irrelevant information or save the items I want to look at again in a way that doesn't involve going through everything. But I did add the list serve and hope that it works when they make the shift in July. So far it looks like it will.

Thing 6

I found the Blog reader easier to understand and install than Flickr. I was able to add subscriptions with ease and added my niece's travel blog, a library list serve that I generally receive through e-mail and my son-in-law's football blog. I also searched for additional blogs but found this to be quite time consuming checking each one out to see if it was one I would like to add. I agree with the video that having all the blogs and web sites on one page is easier than going to each individually but I can also see where this could eat up a lot of time. Before I would go to the site only if I wanted something in particular or had extra time but with all of them on one page it will be easier to visit each one - which may actually eat up more time. This will be a time will tell option.