"Okay, This Is Just Too Weird": Identifying Outreach Opportunities In Facebook

Bietila, David / Edwards, Elizabeth / Issue Date: 4-Aug-2008

Citation: Bietila, D. & Edwards, E. (2008, August). “Okay, this is just too weird”: Identifying outreach opportunities in Facebook. Presented at A Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends, Denver, CO.

[http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/]

Abstract: The tremendous popularity of social networking sites like Facebook presents libraries with unique opportunities for reaching students. What many organizations fail to realize, however, is that the presence of professors, librarians, or parents in this social space is often perceived as intrusive, unwelcome, or just plain "weird". Researchers at a small university library decided to take a step back and ask a critical question: what do our students really want? That is, how do our students really use Facebook, and what part can the library play in this social environment?

The library literature provides some insights; many of these recommendations, however, are from the perspective of librarians and do not reflect students' expectations, experiences, or preferences. Researchers conducted a mixed methods study of students' use of Facebook, focusing on the intersection of students' academic and social lives in this platform. Results indicated that students are uncertain about the library and librarians using Facebook, but are willing to consider accessing the library through this platform in the right circumstances.

By listening to students' concerns and identifying standards for interaction, the researchers made recommendations for restructuring the library's Facebook initiatives. This panel will offer an overview of this study and its implications for library outreach efforts in Facebook. This panel will explore the conflict between the literature's best practices and students' expectations for library behavior in Facebook.

A discussion of the library's experiences in implementing and refining its Facebook campaign will facilitate a broader consideration of the opportunities social networking sites present for libraries.

PPT And Notes Available From

[http://hdl.handle.net/1961/4533]

Slideshare Available At

[http://www.slideshare.net/brixton/okay-this-is-just-too-weird-identifying-outreach-opportunities-in-facebook]

Related

[http://www.slideshare.net/brixton/ok-this-is-just-too-weird-identifying-outreach-opportunites-in-facebook]

The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal / Ben Mezrich

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages / On Sale: July 14, 2009 /Price: $25.00 / ISBN: 978-0-385-52937-2 (0-385-52937-6)

Also available As: Unabridged audio CD, Unabridged audiobook download and An eBook. /Tags: Provided LibraryThing

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard.

Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school.

In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money.

The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.

Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. [snip]

Source

[http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385529372]

Amazon

[http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376]

See Also

Facebook: The Movie / Forbes/com / Taylor Buley / 07.07.09, 08:20 PM EDT

Forbes has obtained Aaron Sorkin's screenplay about the founding of the social network.

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has become a major player on the glowing screen. Next stop? The big screen.

Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin are said to have contracted with Aaron Sorkin--writer of movies such as A Few Good Men and Charlie Wilson's War and for the television series West Wing and Sports Night--to write a script about the genesis of Facebook. Sorkin's script, dated May 28 and obtained by Forbes, is titled The Social Network.

It's the story of Zuckerberg, "a sweet-looking 19-year-old whose lack of any physically intimidating attributes masks a very complicated and dangerous anger." The storyline, which starts with Zuckerberg's girlfriend dumping him in a bar and ends with him adding her as a friend on his multibillion-dollar Web site, is said to be based on Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Mezrich's book is scheduled to go on sale later this month.

The 162-page script includes juicy dialogue between Zuckerberg and ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendrera. In 2004, ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging breach of contract and unauthorized use of ConnectU's source code.

[more]

[http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/07/facebook-zuckerberg-sorkin-technology-internet-facebook.html]

News Coverage

CHE /Wired Campus / Author Explores the Juicy Origins of Facebook / Jeff Young

[http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Author-Explores-the-Juicy/7583/]

BookTV / After Words / Interview

From BookExpo America in New York City ... .

Ben Mezrich recounts the creation of the social networking site, Facebook, in The Accidental Billionaires. Mr. Mezrich details the ascendancy of the website from its beginnings as a members-only service for Harvard University students to its current international status and profiles several of the principal players in the development of the site, including Facebook's current CEO Mark Zuckerberg..

Ben Mezrich discusses his book with A.J. Jacobs, editor at large at Esquire magazine ... .

Airings

• August 8th at 10pm (ET)
• August 9th at 9pm (ET)
• August 10th at 12am (ET)
• August 10th at 3am (ET)

[http://tinyurl.com/kmk3by]

And

"I'm Ready For My Close Up ...": Facebook - The Movie

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/08/august-28-2008-computerworld-new.html]

SMW'09: Social Mobile Web / August 29 - 31 2009 / Vancouver, Canada

The mobile space is evolving at an astonishing rate. At present there are over 3.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide and with continued advances in devices, services and billing models, the mobile web looks set to inspire a new age of anytime, anywhere information access. The inherent characteristics of mobile phones enable new types of interactions, e.g. mobile phones are personal to the individual, they are always on and always connected. And as such we are seeing a shift towards mobile devices for social mediated tasks.

The world is also witnessing an explosion in social web services. Online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace continue to experience huge increases in usage, with more and more users seeking novel ways of interacting with their friends and family.

In this workshop we are interested in the combination of these two exciting research spaces: the social web and the mobile space. We believe that the social mobile web is going to be a highly influential research area in the near future. As such this workshop will investigate the current state of the social mobile web.

Topics of interest to this workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Novel social interactions on mobile devices
• Social mobile content sharing and distribution services
• Context aware mobile services - beyond location based services
• Social mobile search and social mobile browsing
• User evaluations of social mobile services
• Mobile user interfaces that incorporate social elements
• Mobility and social networks
• Models of mobile social behavior and mobile traces
• Urban gaming, mobile mixed reality, etc.
• Innovative social mobile applications

This workshop is targeted towards researchers working within the mobile web and social web spaces.

The deadline for papers is May 11th 2009 / Full details on paper submission are available.

Source

[http://thesocialmobileweb.org/]

Freedom To Surf: The Productive Benefits Of Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing

Freedom to Surf:

Workers More Productive

If Allowed to Use the Internet for Leisure

Media Release, Thursday 2 April 2009
University of Melbourne

Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study.

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

[snip]

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. [snip]

The attraction of WILB, according to Dr Coker, can be attributed to people’s imperfect concentration. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. [snip]

" .... . Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

However Dr Coker says that it is important such browsing is done in moderation, as internet addiction can have the reverse effect.

[snip]

“WILB is not as helpful for ... those who behave with internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.”

Multimedia Available

Broadcast Quality Video (approx 500mb+)

Dr Brent Coker Discussing Study

[http://media.marcom.unimelb.edu.au/pub/newsroom/Coker/cokerb_mr_20090401.mov]
Note: an FTP client is recommended to download this footage.

>>>You Tube Video "Dr Brent Coker - 'Freedom To Surf'"<<<

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga-8__7tgkE]

An audio (MP3) file of this interview is available at

[http://media.marcom.unimelb.edu.au/pub/newsroom/Coker/cokerb_mr_20090401.mp3]
Contact

Dr Brent Coker /University of Melbourne / Dept of Management and Marketing

bcoker@unimelb.edu.au

Source

[http://voice.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/]

Link To Significant Portion of The Study Report

Freedom to Surf: The Productive Benefits of Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB)

[http://www.deloosh.com/Blog/post.aspx?id=3246c7d5-bfdc-4328-afae-f4ece02780dc]

NYTimes: Facebook | Two Hundred Million And Counting ...

New York Times / March 29, 2009

Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? / By BRAD STONE

WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

[snip]

By any measure, Facebook’s growth is a great accomplishment. The crew of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 24-year-old co-founder and chief executive, is signing up nearly a million new members a day, and now more than 70 percent of the service’s members live overseas, in countries like Italy, the Czech Republic and Indonesia. Facebook’s ranks in those countries swelled last year after the company offered its site in their languages.

[snip]

Unlike search engines, which ably track prominent Internet presences, Facebook reconnects regular folks with old friends and strengthens their bonds with new pals — even if the glue is nothing more than embarrassing old pictures or memories of their second-grade teacher.

[snip]

Facebook’s mission, he says, is to be used by everyone in the world to share information seamlessly. “Two hundred million in a world of six billion is tiny,” he says. “It’s a cool milestone. It’s great that we reached that, especially in such a short amount of time. But there is so much more to do.”

[snip]

Uniting disparate groups on a single Internet service runs counter to 50 years of research by sociologists into what is known as “homophily” — the tendency of individuals to associate only with like-minded people of similar age and ethnicity.

[snip]

Facebook is trying to teach members to use privacy settings to manage their network so they can speak discreetly only to certain friends, like co-workers or family members, as opposed to other “friends” like bosses or professional colleagues. But most Facebook users haven’t taken advantage of the privacy settings; the company estimates that only 20 percent of its members use them.

[snip]

Internet evangelists say that when a technology diffuses into society, as Facebook appears to be doing, it has achieved “critical mass.” The sheer presence of all their friends, family and colleagues on Facebook creates potent ties between users and the site — ties that are hard to break even when people want to break them.

Source

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/internet/29face.html]

NPR: What's For Sale? Check Facebook

NPR / Weekend Edition Saturday / March 7, 2009

The social-networking juggernaut Facebook is out to change online classified ads, turning what are often flat and anonymous listings into something personal, interactive and social.

In the process, the Facebook marketplace could raise millions of dollars for charity.

Facebook first launched an online classified ad site nearly two years ago, but it didn't catch on. Today, when most people think of online classifieds, they think of craigslist or perhaps the local newspaper's Web site.

Craigslist alone brings in tens of millions of dollars, and analysts say it could bring in much more. Facebook views that market as a potentially new and sizeable revenue stream. It's especially attractive because Facebook, though wildly popular, doesn't turn a profit.

The company's new approach to classified ads is like Facebook itself — social and interactive. A company called Oodle designed the site and will manage it.

The software application allows you to easily sell something, give it away, ask for something or sell an item with the proceeds going to a nonprofit.

[more]

Source

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101569720]

Rome 2009 Seminar: Workshop Web 2.0 And Libraries

Workshop Web 2.0 And Libraries

6 marzo 2009, h.9.00-13.30

Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Facoltà di Architettura)

Aula Urbano VIII,

Via della Madonna dei Monti, 40 Roma

Web 2.0 has posed a number of challenges for the library and marks a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. In the course of this seminar, organised by CASPUR/CIBER in collaboration with AIB Lazio, AIDA, CILEA, FAO and University of Rome Three Library System we will seek to describe how libraries have responded to the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 applications and how organisations can best exploit the potential which Library 2.0 can provide.

Keynote speaker, Gerry McKiernan, will describe current trends and changing scenarios, while other speakers will describe how Library 2.0 features have been deployed with a special focus on the Italian context.

9.00 - 9.30 Greetings and Introduction/ Mary Joan Crowley, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" [abstract] /[ppt]/[video]

9.30 - 11.00 / The Future of The Library / Gerry McKiernan, Iowa State University Library [abstract] / [ppt] 16M / [video]

11.00 - 11.30 / Coffee break

11.30 - 12.00 / Q&A

12.00 - 12.30 / "Italian Library 2.0?": One Question, Many answers / Bonaria Biancu, Università di Milano Bicocca [abstract]/[ppt] [survey results -In Italian] /[video]

12.30 - 13.00 / RSS As An Easier Alternative To OAI-PMH For Sharing Bibliographic Information / Valeria Pesce, FAO [abstract]/[ppt]

13.00 - 13.30 / Will Web 2.0 Ever Meet Library Catalogs? / Andrea Marchitelli, CILEA [abstract]/[ppt]/[video]

The key note speech by Gerry McKiernan will be delivered in English, the other presentations will be delivered in Italian.

Source

[http://uniciber.it/index.php?id=486]

Source [Italian]

[http://uniciber.it/index.php?id=485]