Facebook 101 for Librarians

Facebook 101: What Librarians Need to Know Laurie M. Bridges, Business & Economics Librarian Oregon State University, blog: infodoodads.com

Should librarians

be there??

Why should librarians care?

Popularity of the website

Serving generation Y (now and in the future)

Social aspects of information sharing

Organization of information

Outreach opportunities

Advertising opportunities

Virtual networking with librarians

It’s Popular!

Facebook is the most popular website for young adults age 18-24. More popular than Google. (Anderson Analytics 2007)

Flickr: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

Top 10 Websites

Social Networking More Popular Among Women (18-24)

More Stats

Over 58 million active users and more than 1/2 of them return daily (Facebook)

85% of college/university students have a Facebook account (Facebook)

Facebook is the 5 th most trafficked website in the U.S. (Alexa, Dec 07)

Flickr: castortroy520

Social Networking & Teens

55% of all teens, age 12-17, use online social networking sites (Pew/Internet, 2007)

For girls social networking sites are places to reinforce pre-existing friendships (Pew/Internet 2007)

For boys social networking sites are places to maintain contact with friends and make new friends; older boys who use social networking sites (29%) to flirt (Pew/Internet, 2007)

flickr: Feuillu

Growth & Reach

Members, features, updates

May 24 Sept. Feb. ‘04

Facebook Usage

Average user spends 20 minutes on Facebook per visit (Facebook)

Average user visits 32 pages per visit (Alexa)

Most Common Activities* (Freiert, 2007)

Browsing Profiles

Interacting with Applications

Browsing Pictures

*based on visits per month and time per visit

What is Facebook?

Why Do People Use Facebook?

Keep in touch

Network

Make friends

Date

Reinforce

relationships

Etc.

Flickr: james barnes

Homepage (News Feed) Flickr : Geek&Poke

What’s in a Profile?

Cont.

Applications

Applications – Most Active Users

Fun Wall (2,146,258 daily active users)

Super Wall (2,130,285 …)

Top Friends (1,971,734 …)

Movies (1,193,392 daily …)

Bumper Sticker (947,289 …)

Scrabulous (669,245 …)

SuperPoke (621,245 …)

Texas HoldEm Poker (609,416 …)

Applications for Libraries

Notre Dame Library Search (2 active daily users)

WorldCat (45 daily active users)

JSTOR (20 daily active users)

Groups & Pages

Groups vs. Pages

No updates

No applications

No usage stats

Updates directly to user news feed

Can add many applications

Usage stats including visitors per day

Facebook Groups Keyword search for “library”

Save the British Library! 2,339 members

Save the British Library! (cont.)

Facebook Pages

164 Fans (after 6 months)

Promoted on catalog’s blog and library website

Facebook Pages

Charles B. Phillips Library, Aurora University

Over 100 fans

Promotion: each new Fan entered to win two Phantom of the Opera Tickets

Facebook Pages Stats

Advertising

Advertising on Facebook UNC Chapel Hill – Focus Group Recruitment University of Calgary – Increase usage of ebrary and Refworks

Cont.

Buying an Ad

CPM

Set the price for 1,000 views

CPC

Set the price per click

Go to the bottom of any Facebook webpage and click the Advertisers link. Create ad and tell Facebook when to run it and who to target Pay for the ad (credit card)

Lingo

Facebook Me/Friend Me

Poke

Wall

Questions??

Slideshow: www.slideshare.net/ilaurie

References

Freiert, Max. “14 Million people interacted with Facebook Applications in August.” Compete.com. Sep 11, 2007. http://blog.compete.com/2007/09/14/facebook-activity-breakdown-application/