Thing 18: FaceSpace!

Social networking has taken the industrialized world by storm. It's a tremendous waste of time, if you ask me, so it is only natural that I've got a MySpace page (no, you can't see it) and a Facebook profile. ;)

I'm not what you'd call a power-user of these sites, though. For example, my girlfriend has 360-something friends on Facebook, and I know Morgan just broke 420. I've got something like 130, and it feels like too many. I guess I'm just not a terribly social person, but I don't like to "network" with people to whom I don't actually have some connection beyond simple common interests. Almost all of my FB friends, for example, are people I have known personally, and the ones I've never physically met are almost all "colleagues" of a sort in the Privateer Press Gang.

That said, it's neat, this social networking phenomenon. It allows people to form and maintain connections (of an incredibly superficial, limited sort) with pretty much anybody in the world. Facebook also allows people to become Fans or Supporters as well as Friends, so companies and organizations can also become part of the social networks. MySpace has some sort of similar functionality, but MySpace is such a train wreck (thanks to near-limitless "customizability") these days that I never bother with it any more.

Educators need to be aware of social networking for one simple reason: students ARE using it. If Law & Order - the origin of the fictional social networking site "FaceSpace" - and other police shows are to be believed, they're all doing something sinister with it, but I think we can safely take a less frightening view and just acknowledge that students are comfortable with the technology. We educators don't necessarily need to jump in the middle of their business, but it is always useful to know what they're up to.

Honestly, because of the extremely public nature of social networking, I don't think that MySpace or Facebook has much instructional value. Something more limited, like Facebook was at its inception (i.e. limited to one school or a small group of them), might have some use to instructors, but I think we're probably better off leaving the social networks for socializing - such as it is on the internet.