At this point I’d say they haven’t had much of an effect on my life or work. I took a class on Web 2.0 tools from Infopeople in late 2007, for which I tried out delicious, Bloglines, and LibraryThing, among others. My primary response at that point was, “I don’t have time for this”. Using those tools was a distraction from the business of my life, not an enhancement or a simplifier, so I stopped using them soon after the class ended.
When my older son turned 13, a year and a half ago, friends invited him to join Facebook. I signed up with him, to see what was going on in his online life. My Facebook ‘friends’ are real-life friends and family, and I appreciate the updates on what they’re thinking about or doing. When I was a young adult, my grandmother wrote frequent letters, telling me what she was doing, and giving me little updates on my cousins’ activities. She’s not here to do that anymore. Facebook updates fill some of that gap, although with a rather different feel from my grandmother’s letters!
I read other people’s posts on Facebook, but I don’t write much myself. I’m not extremely social in person, either. I’m an introvert, and I need lots of recovery time from the stimulation of interacting with others. I tire easily in crowds, and overload quickly in shopping malls or busy websites. I read once that the difference between introverts and extraverts is that the former derive their energy from time alone—“yes, of course” I thought—and the latter recharge their personal batteries by interacting with other people. This was such a bizarre notion that I turned back to the cover of the book to be sure it was written in English. (So it was: Raising your spirited child: A guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, energetic, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka.) How can that work? Does water flow uphill for extraverts, too? Apparently other people are more different from me than I had realized.
Which leads me to wonder: do introverts and extraverts use social networking sites differently? Apparently others have pondered similar questions, such as are introverts more active in social media than extroverts? It also leads me to wonder: how much online social interaction do I want in my life? I can easily see myself becoming overcommitted, feeling pressured by (an imaginary?) social obligation to keep my various accounts updated.
In any case, I’m more interested in social software for library use than personal use—I think I could handle blogging as a work activity. Right now, though, if I want to use Web 2.0 tools to enhance library services at my small branch, it would need to be on my own time. We’ll see—after a semester of learning about the possibilities, I may be ready to let social software tools into my work life.
