Thing 18: Myspace and Facebook

So I am waaay ahead of the curve on this Thing. I have been using Myspace for years, and have been on Facebook now for at least a year - maybe more. It's such a great way to keep up with friends, particularly when most of my friends and family live far away - New York, Houston, Boston, Sarasota. It was part of the reason I started writing a blog - it's a lot easier to put something up that everyone can read, than it is to tell the story about 15 times. I even have had a friend tell me recently that she was mad because I haven't been blogging as much, so she has no idea what I've been up to. That and I can't tell you how many times I've sent messages to my dad via Myspace, because I was more sure he'd read them there than through his email.

I just recently signed our youth services department up for a Myspace page. You can find it here. We're going to be starting up an after school teen program, and I thought it would be a good way to get the word out. The profile's not much to look at right now, but I'm working on it. I also signed us up for a Facebook page at the same time. I don't know how to link my profile, but if you register, you can look up ColumbiaCounty PublicLibrary YouthServices, and you'll find me.

I've used groups on my other accounts, but honestly, I don't really keep up with them. We have one for my youth group at church, but since I'm not an admin (something I need to get changed), I can't send mass messages to the group. Sure you can post on a message board, but they don't really send anything out telling you that. So unless you check back often, it's kinda useless. A feature I do like is being able to post and event and invite people. They can RSVP, and the pages will even give them a reminder when it's coming up. That's the tool I've used to promote our programs.

As far as Myspace v. Facebook goes, Facebook is the winner in my book. Both have changed their formats, which vexes me greatly, but Facebook has the cleaner, more streamlined approach. The new Facebook format has the main page just showing friends' status updates (trying to be Twitter?), and everything else, photos tagged, groups joined, etc. is in a bar on the right. Again, I'm not enthused over this new change, but it's still clean, neat. Myspace just has too much. I hate all the videos and flash that the Myspace front page has. I also hate how much people have "pimped" their pages. It's annoying and takes forever to load. Yes, I'm guilty of changing the background, but all the music, and videos everyone has - they reload every time you have to go back to the person's profile. Stupid. And I have talked far too long about this.