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social networks; it lacks the bells and whistles of screaming songs and bright colors of the flashy, “fun” sites and presents an overall more serious look and feel.
MySpace is the exact opposite and allows users a lot of freedom to play media, add colors and features, adapt the basic profile structure and generally make their profile look however they want, without sticking to much of template. The result is a lot of loud, colorful profiles that do not resemble one another and often feel cluttered and overwhelming. MySpace has a reputation of being slightly skewed towards teenagers, bands and spammy porn profiles, making it less than desirable for business use.
Facebook, my personal favorite, has held tight control to its profile restrictions and falls somewhere in between the two, making it the perfect place to network for business and let your personality shine through. The new redesign makes it a little harder to navigate but cleans up the screens, making each page look more alike and organized. What started as a tightly closed network of colleges and universities has expanded to let people of all ages join; they’ve even developed Facebook pages (as opposed to profiles) to let businesses in on the action. However, they are not super-business friendly so tread carefully if you are looking to represent a group and not a single entity.
Quite obviously, there’s a lot more to any of these sites, and to social media in general, than I could even begin to talk about here. People have, literally, written books on this stuff. The best way to get involved and learn how to use these sites effectively is to jump right in and try them. After all, they were founded on the idea that they are what you make of them. So start making something.
If you want to see what I’ve done on any of these sites, check out my Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.
Great blog post. Just sent it to the folks at my University who work on our Web site in the hopes it will get them to start thinking more about social networking.
Mary-
I debated over putting it in there or not, for the very reasons you bring up, and in the end left it hoping some would see the humor in it and see it as more of a “Facebook for Dummies” kind of post. However, I can see your point and hope I have not seriously offended anyone. I love seeing more and more people of all ages on these sites and would not want to deter someone from joining and learning at their own pace.
Thank you for showing me another point of view, and thanks for reading. I’m really not that mean, I swear!
-Alison
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