Getting involved with social networking

On May 20, in the LBCC library, a workshop was held on social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. The workshop was taught by Richenda Wilkinson, a librarian at LBCC. The focus of the workshop was not only to get people more familiar with online networking, but to actually get them set up with accounts and networking for themselves.

Wilkinson started the workshop by explaining the importance of online networking. She explained that it’s about keeping in contact with people, re-contacting old friends, and basic social networking. She also explained the differences between Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, and explained why she prefers Facebook over Myspace. According to Wilkinson Myspace has more adds and she also stated that “Myspace is used more by younger people.”

Wilkinson also showed us some special social networking sites that focus on people having things in common with others, her example of this was a network for people involved with sewing.

Wilkinson also went over the advantages and geniusness of marketing and advertising through social networks, “it’s really a great tool for marketers.” The advertisers collect information from you through what you do on network and then display adds fitting to what you like or are into.

After a thorough explanation on how networking works Wilkinson proceeded to help everybody set up a Facebook account as well as register with the school they attended for high school. Within minutes people all through out the room were finding friends from high school that they hadn’t seen of heard from in decades. At that point the true importance of social networking became apparent and accepted by almost everyone in the room.

John McArdle, the director of development, attended the workshop for many reasons. For one, he has a son who is currently a sophomore in high school that has bought into the age of online networking. McArdle also stated that, “I’m trying to lean where this makes sense in the business world.”

Social networking is a great tool that a lot of people still don’t know the importance of. In the fastly changing world of technology it is important to keep an open mind and welcome new tools for the future. There are scheduled to be more workshops on social networking in the future so I would encourage anyone looking to embrace and take advantage of these new technologies to attend. I will update this as soon as I know when the workshops will be held, or you could keep checking the campus shorts.

Just keep in mind that if you don’t give social networking a try you may never know what you’ll miss or who you will find.


-Blair McMackin