Slideshare and Facebook joined up

After a long break (which I shall explain in later posts) I'm back and catching you up with things you may already know about!!
SlideShare announced :
"While the Facebook application is not an exact replica of SlideShare, we have tried to include the core features. You can upload your presentations, tag them, comment on others’ presentations and browse using “latest” or “most viewed” tabs . You can also import any of presentations from SlideShare into Facebook with a single click, by specifying the username or tag. This saves the hassle of copying-pasting the embed code. These presentations will show up in Facebook as “imported” with the proper attributions to the original author/user on SlideShare. We think this feature will allow the best content from SlideShare to be consumed by an entirely new audience. "

Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter

No doubt about it : I don't blog as much as I did ; there aren't so many posts on the blogs that I follow.
In an article 'Blogs wane as the young drift to sites like twitter" in the New York Times Feb 20, 2011 by Verne. G. Kopytoff, we discover the trends. The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.
Among older internet users blogging is still preferred. Some will see Twitter and Facebook as complementary to blogs - a place to promote their blogs.

Facebook guide

Mashable have created an online guide to using Facebook, here.
There are sections om :
Basics
Managing your Facebook Wall
Facebook for Business
Facebook applications
Advanced topics

I must find time to go through it.

100 ways you should be using Facebook in your classroom

Online College have come up with a great list of 100 ways to use Facebook. They say "Teachers can utilize Facebook for class projects, for enhancing communication, and for engaging students in a manner that might not be entirely possible in traditional classroom settings. Read on to learn how you can be using Facebook in your classroom, no matter if you are a professor, student, working online, or showing up in person for class."

Worried about your privacy on Facebook?

Take a look at 10 solid Tips To Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy, from makeuseofit.com.
1. Organize Friends to lists
2.Customise profile privacy
3.Set Facebook privacy level of Photo albums
4.Restrict search visibility
5.Control automatic wallposts and news feed updates
6.Set Facebook wall privacy
7.Avoid appearing in adverts
8.Protect yourself against Friends' applications
9.Privacy from your applications
10.When quitting Facebook for good

Facebook and the over 35s

Apparently the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.
Here are the latest stats on Facebook’s US audience gender and age demographics, according to the company:
Facebook US Audience Growth, Last 180 Days
Looking at Facebook US audience growth over the last 180 days, it’s clear that Facebook is seeing massive increases in adoption amongst users 35-65. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is still women over 55 - there are now nearly 1.5 million of them active on Facebook each month.
The biggest growth in terms of absolute new users over the last six month came amongst users 35-44. Over 4 million more US women 35-44 and nearly 3 million more US men 35-44 used Facebook in March 2009 compared to September 2008.

Wonder what the situation is here in the UK? Certainly seems to be catching on but Twitter is the really fsahionable one.

Here's the link where this came from.

ECAR study 2008 on Undergraduate Students and Information Technology

This important longitudinal study (yearly from 2004 to 2008) has appeared again. It is US- based and draws on massive quantitative data and also has a special section on student participation in social networking sites.
This year they asked 3 questions on Information Literacy, derived from the ACRL standards. Surprise surprise 79.5% gave themselves glowing reports on their ability to "use the internet effectively and efficiently to search for information" , with half saying they were "very skilled and another third saying they were "experts. About half also said they were "very skilled" or "expert" at 2evaluating the reliability and credibility of online sources of information" or "understanding the ethical and legal issues surrounding the access and use of digital information."
As the report continues the "potential gap between actual and perceived skills and literacy is important to understand and factor into strategies for teaching and learning at the institution".

On social networking : 85.2% now use SNSs.. Half of these users now integrate SNSs into their academic life for communicating with classmates about course-related matters, but only 5.5% use them for communication to tutors about academic matters.No consensus on whether SNSs should be exclusive realm of students. Guess this gives some support for libraries to link into SLSs, with caution!

Facebook concerns

It is interesting that concerns over data privacy etc. aspects of Facebook and other social networking sites seem to be global. Lyn Parker and I have given a couple of sessions on "What does your Facebook say about you?" at Sheffield University (see http://cilass.group.shef.ac.uk/?p=267) and there was quite a lot of interest around this topic from all parties. I'm in Australia at the moment and in yesterday's newspaper there was an article reprinted from the Washington Post:
Hart, K. (2008) "Face like an open book." Sydney Morning Herald. The guide section. 23 June, 10.
It mentions studies by people in the US, including a study by Adrienne Felt at the University of Virginia who looked at 150 popular Facebook "applications" and found that the majority "have uneccessary access to private data". More info on her study is at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/felt/privacy/