Facebook is nothing new to me (I joined after my wedding in the summer of 2007 to keep in touch with all the wonderful new friends who shared in me and my wife's celebration), so this exercise merely involves continuing to expand my FB boundaries from personal/social to academic/professional. In the past few months, I've begun "following" a couple libraries or library organizations on Facebook to stay in the loop with news and developments in the field and specific to these groups. The library I follow is the Doane Library at Denison University in Granville, OH (where I'm completing my semester-long practicum for LIS 635), and I'm also a member of the Kent State University School of Library and Information Science group (where I'll be starting my master's degree program in January).
Like listservs have (and continue to) serve as resources for current and future library professionals, Facebook groups can serve as an additional means of communication among those in the field regarding job searching, current topics of interest, extracurricular organizations, etc. Following the guidelines of NEFLIN's recommended FB groups for librarians, I joined Library 2.0 Interest Group and Future Librarians and Those Who Love Them! (which has the best "profile picture" ever -- an anime-style librarian illustrated with the text "She Blinded Me With Library Science"). It's interesting to note that NEFLIN's blog as of March 2009 proclaims that "MySpace is the most used social network, but Facebook is currently the fastest growing social network": anyone can tell you that technology trends can change in a heartbeat, and here, 21 months after this statement, I think anyone could guess that Facebook has far surpassed MySpace's popularity. This entry from Newsweek's 20/10: The Decade in Rewind reinforces this opinion, stating that Facebook's membership now doubles that of MySpace. (I particularly appreciate the writer's comment on MySpace's "garish fonts and epilepsy-inducing images" -- one of the many reasons I never liked MySpace: its lack of aesthetic appeal. The only reason I ever do use MySpace: to check out new musical artists!)
In addition to allowing ways for folks to maintain connections to friends and acquaintances near and far, Facebook has expanded its user base to organizations, groups, small (and large) businesses, and beyond in ways I don't think anyone ever could have conceived. I thought hell froze over a couple years ago when one of my closest, and oldest (freshman, junior, and senior-year college roommate), friends grudgingly joined, unjoined, then rejoined Facebook. He has never been one to follow trends, but I welcomed his presence there as it allowed us yet another way to connect (classically, we've been intermittent phone buddies). But, hell really did freeze over when I received an email notification a month ago that my sixty-three-year-old, technology-reluctant mother, requested my friendship on FB! Granted, her impetus to join was really great for her -- to stay in contact with friends from her high school (they'd had a recent collective reunion that she enjoyed) -- but I just about fell out of my chair before quickly accepting her friend request! From its humble beginnings as a social network for MIT students, Facebook's ubiquity has virtually made it the de facto standard for social interaction, be it personal or professional.
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