Wednesday 12 May 2010

Why are social media / web 2.0 tools vital?

This YouTube video examines the shift towards social media and highlights the importance of librarians 'getting to grips' with the web 2.0 tools. Another reason to participate in the Cam23 programme!



Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

(Thanks to @ekcragg for bringing this to our attention.)

2 comments:

  1. Interesting figures, although those recruitment stats sound crazily high. A few other things struck me though:

    Online students out-perform face-to-face instruction - possibly because they are motivated enough to do distance learning?

    Generation Y & Z consider e-mail passé - According to Wikipedia, I count as Gen Y (apparently) and have younger cousins and siblings as examples as well. I think e-mail is as important as it ever was for one-to-one communication and for business/research purposes. I suspect most don't want university accounts because they already have too many places to check, including personal email accounts and the institutions' VLEs. Why not use the VLE for university communication?

    Kindle e-books outselling paper books - wasn't this a statistic for Christmas Day only? Call me a cynic, but isn't it far more likely that the only people that have received presents on a particular day are unlikely to instantly buy more, unless one of those presents was an e-reader?

    Apart from these points, this does make an excellent case for social media, thanks for posting!

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  2. I (born in the 1980s) don't consider email to be passé. However, I agree with tumeltyni that while it is very useful, if there are significant barriers to entry/easier means of communication, there's no real point in using it: I don't use email in order to use email; I use it to communicate.

    For instance, I am taking a distance learning course at a well-known (within the library community) Welsh university. This university does not allow student email accounts to be forwarded to other email accounts-- which means that I don't ever check my email from this university. I already have my own work and personal emails, and I don't see the point of adding even more hassle in my life without any added value.

    And that, to me, is the point of social media. Painlessly adding value.

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