Social Networking Take 1

I actally have a LiveJournal account-albeit one I hardly use-but I do occaisionally read a few of my friends' pages. Friends as in people I actually know in person, but that's another issue. In the past, I have been very critical of onling communities, especially MySpace as it seemed like high school (which I hated with fiery gut-wrenching passion) on the Internet. Drama included. The articles attached to this module, however, did make me rethink some of my prejudices. And don't you just hate when that happens? For instance, I never would have thought to use a MySpace page to show off library-related youtube videos and/or podcasts. This would seem to provide many opportunities to engage patrons and allow them to become more a part of their local library.

One question I have though, and this applies to many of these web 2.0 programs, is how do we know *which* social networking community to be a part of? As mentioned in one of the articles, the first major site was Friendster, then there's also LiveJournal, Greatest Journal, MySpace, Facebook, and likely many many others. And it seems as if the answer to "which one is in and hot?" is continually changing. So do we just chose the one that is most popular this minute, make multiple accounts on many sites, or choose another tactic entirely? While having a fun, engaging, and interactive presence on the Web would be a great thing for the library, I wonder the actual implementation of these new ideas.