Week 11 Social networking

I have been meaning to establish an account on Facebook so this unit has been a motivator. Creating the account was easy. I invited some friends and family and looked at lists from college and high school. It was interesting to see additional suggestions for new "friends" pop up on the site as I added people that I know to my list.
Since I am new at using Facebook as a connection building tool, I am not sure how libraries would use this as compared to some of the other Web 2.0 applications we have learned about. Perhaps book clubs from different public libraries could easily share recommendations or establish cooperative meeting times. Certainly an important consideration in establishing social networking sites is the use of them to connect with teen and young adult users. So many students at my high school have accounts in MySpace, Facebook, and others.
I did a search for "libraries". Many of the libraries that I found use Facebook to promote programs, get feedback from attendees and gather suggestions for new activities. At this point I can see Facebook, MySpace, etc. being more useful to public libraries. Many schools, including my own have blocked social networking sites from computers. In addition to students tying up computers for too much time on personal networking to incidents of cyberbullying, we have not evolved to where these sites can be accessed within the building.
The decision to invest in maintenance time is major factor when deciding to go with these innovative Web 2.0 applications. Having someone on staff dedicated and comfortable with keeping the site current will make a library's social networking site successful.
So much to learn. Well, I am going to go check on my Facebook page. Maybe someone has "friended" me.