In the world of online “friends,” many libraries are still loners

Have libraries been successful in using social networking sites? Not if success is to be measured by the number of “friends” libraries have acquired, says Richard W. Boss in “Social Networking Sites and Libraries,” a paper prepared in October 2009 for the Public Library Association. Most libraries have only a few hundred friends, Boss says, and none has more than 10,000. On average, fewer than one percent of the population served by a library have identified themselves as “friends” of their library on a social networking site.

“While a large number of friends is not the only measure of success, it is the only measure that is readily available,” Boss says. “To the extent that libraries have been able to attract people who are not regular users of libraries, even a small response could be considered success. Unfortunately, there appear to be no studies of the demographics of persons who have accessed libraries on social library network services.”

Many of the libraries that “do” social networking focus on one-way communication; those that encourage feedback appear to have more “friends” in relation to population served. Also, some public libraries maintain separate presences on a social networking service for teens and for adults; this seems to increase the number of teens who identify themselves as “friends.”

“Facebook and MySpace appear to be more successful reaching teens than the other social networking sites,” Boss writes, “not only because they have a very high percentage of teen members, but also because feedback is much easier than for the other major sites.” Flickr and YouTube appear to be more successful for posting a lot of content, and Twitter specializes in “tweeting”—sending and receiving brief messages.

Here are thumbnail sketches of the five social networking sites that were most visited and, as of the third quarter of 2009, most widely used by public libraries:

* Facebook was launched in 2004 as a social networking site at Harvard University but quickly expanded to other universities and, within a couple of years, to anyone at least 13 years old. A user can join and create as many as 200 groups according to his/her interests. In the fourth quarter of 2009, Facebook had five times as many visitors each month in the United States as MySpace, despite the fact that the latter had more U.S. members. Worldwide, Facebook membership was almost 300 million, many of them people of high school and college age.

* YouTube (2005) allows registered users to upload unlimited videos; unregistered users can watch them. YouTube has more than four times as many visitors each month as MySpace and almost as many as FaceBook. Its age distribution is the broadest of any of the social networking sites: 15-55 years.

* Twitter (2006) is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read “tweets,” text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s “followers.” A tweet can include a link to a URL. As of late 2009, Twitter had 44 million members and almost as many visitors each month as YouTube. The age range was 18-45. Twitter does not appear to be much used by libraries, except, possibly, for announcing library events. (This paragraph is way too long for a “tweet.”)

* Flickr was also launched in 2004 as a website for sharing images and videos. It has both free and fee-based accounts, the latter with unlimited uploads, bandwidth, and storage. As of late 2009, the site had 32 million members and was fourth most popular in terms of number of visitors. The Library of Congress and many public libraries, museums, and archives post images on Flickr.

* MySpace, launched in 2003, was the most popular social networking site in the United States until 2007 but by late 2009 ranked fifth. It saw a 20 percent drop in number of visitors in the first half of 2009, but still had more than 100 million members worldwide. In late 2009, MySpace shifted its focus to the delivery of music and entertainment. Membership consists primarily of people ages 13-24.

Check your library’s website to see if they are using any social networking sites so that you can “friend” or “follow” them online.

Courtesy of the American Library Association.