Gather All Your Nings and Meet at the Junction

View my page on 23 Things on a Stick

I signed up for Ning back at the beginning because I erroneously thought it was one of the blog possibilities. Now I know better! Although I could have had a blog on Ning, it's so much more. I now have my own Ning page, which I think I will be much more likely to keep up than either of the MySpace or Facebook pages that I started. I have even contemplated moving my 23 Things posts over there and continuing this blog with a slightly different focus.

I also looked at Gather and WebJunctionMinnesota. I think WebJunction has real potential for helping me keep up with information/technology overload.

I thought the TechSoup article, "What Can Social Networking Do for Your Organization? Tips and Tools to Help Your Nonprofit Get the Most out of Online Networks," by Brian Satterfield (May 5, 2006) put it nicely as to why libraries -- not just librarians -- would want to participate on social networking sites: "Social networking platforms give nonprofits a forum for meeting like-minded organizations and potential supporters, and provide a medium for spreading their messages beyond the immediate community, says Alan Rosenblatt, Executive Director of the Internet Advocacy Center."

One of the 2.0 messages that I've run into over and over is that we need to be out there on the web where our users -- and our potential users -- are. Social networking sites are definitely where many of them are, at least for the time being.