[Web4lib] The end of MySpace, SecondLife, and Twitter

[Dan Lester]

  ----- Original message ----------------------------------------
  From: "K.G. Schneider" <kgs at bluehighways.com>
  
  >Gopher's heyday was brief, but it was hugely important. 

Amen.

  >If Twitter lasts til 2011, I'd be surprised. But I use it, find it fun and
  >helpful, and even built an awareness service around it (www.twitterprose.com
  >).

  >We don't really know what's going to last, or whether something is a
  >building block for something else. I don't "do" Second Life (insert tired
  >old joke about being busy with my First Life), and I don't know where it's
  >leading, if anywhere, but it's a human endeavor, and that alone makes it
  >interesting in itself.

I hope that no one got the idea that I'm opposed to these social environments.  I've been managing LISTSERV(R) lists, yahoogroups, and other "social sites" such as that for over two decades, and first used a campus wide email system on a mainframe back in 77-80.  We played games, organized D&D parties, played D&D via email, played Diplomacy via email, had ftf parties of all sorts, and so on.  Yes, just on the UNM campus, but it was sure a social network of geeks and semi-geeks.  Heavens, we even had a marriage of a couple who met through the group.  And not all were geeks, even.

Anyway, I've inspired some discussions, and that's what I was after.  Sure, some of these will go away, some will be bought out, merge, and so forth.  That's the way of growth, development, and business.  Despite moving out of LISTSERV management for a number of reasons, I'm continuing with social groups elsewhere, both net and ftf (and usually both), I have a small but growing ning, do other email (both personal and professional), do webpages for myself and for several groups, and so forth.  

I still question whether we need to put as much into some of these technologies/services as we are, but there's only one way to find out.  I also occasionally wonder if libraries, particularly public ones, are well served by having a presence on facebook or secondlife, etc.  I'm sure the presence will bring in a few new users and supporters, but I can also well imagine that some boards and citizens will have several young bovines when they realize that the Sacred Public Library, Home of Purity and Love, is playing around in such Dens of Sin and Degradation and Perversion and Nudity and.....you know the rap.

Of course maybe that'll never happen...

cheers, and y'all have a good time in DC,

dan 

It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you;
  it's what you leave behind you when you go.

dan at riverofdata.com
Dan Lester, Boise, Idaho, USA