[Air-l] social network migration

[Richard Berry]

I would say that are a number of academics in my own department and 
other similar who all use facebook to some extent. Some use it to keep 
in touch with people (ex students for example), some use it as a general 
communication tool (in the same way myspace is used) and some use it to 
share things. The thing I like about Facebook over Myspace is I can post 
links to news stories, webpages etc and easily draw in the other web2.0 
apps I use.

Facebook also seems (in the Uk at least) to be the social networking 
tool of media types, especially in the light of the commments of the 
BBC's head of world service news, Richard Sarmbrook, who said he got 
more news via social networks than traditional media 
(http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story3342.shtml)

Regards
Rich

Jean Burgess wrote:
> David Brake said:
> 
>> While thinking about SNSes I wonder how long it will take for senior
>> academics to take to SNSes and which one they will pick - Facebook is
>> an obvious possibility but I suspect the difficulty of having to
>> project one image for one's students and another for fellow academics
>> will be too hard to overcome. LinkedIn seems too corporate-focused to
>> me. Has anyone seen any signs of academic-focused social networking
>> sites that might take off?
> 
> I don't know about 'senior' academics, but there are increasing numbers of
> PhD students and early- mid-career academics on facebook, as far as I can
> tell. Or is that just projecting? ;)
> 
> It has certainly taken off in my network of colleagues (which admittedly
> consists of a lot of new media scholars), more so since it was made
> available to non-US universities. In fact I have the feeling more of those
> colleagues are on Facebook than were ever on MySpace. (and many of the
> facebook members are also linked-in members).
> 
> I think the introduction of applications has been a big attraction recently,
> creating the right kind of 'buzz' around the scholarly digerati.
> 
> I'd be interested to know if there's less take-up in the UK?
> 
> Also, Facebook has much more powerful privacy controls than anything else
> I've personally used, amounting to 4 privacy levels: a 'public' view, a view
> for members of your networks who are not your friends, a level for friends
> only, and the ability to set up a 'restricted' view and to select which
> friends see the full view, and which ones see only the restricted one.
> 
> And within that, there is the ability to tweak which elements of your user
> profile are visible or invisible within each of those levels.
> 
> Cheers
> Jean
> 
> 

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