Social Media in Library 2.0

Aggregation refers to collecting content from multiple social media sites (such as Facebook or Twitter) with the goal to organize and simplify users’ social networking experiences. While individual sites may offer unique features specific to that site, social networking aggregation collects the content that is produced on several sites and delivers it in a less overwhelming way. Aggregating content is performed by using tools to draw information from different sites into a single space. Aggregation services provide tools and widgets — either downloadable or web-based — that function to consolidate friends, bookmarks, messages and profiles in easy, digestible formats. Aggregation is done by an application programming interface (API).

• The interface is clean and simple.
• It’s easy to switch between viewing only new items and all items.  I usually just view new items.
• I can do a text search of my GR content.
• Feeds can be organized into folders, and individual posts can be tagged (though I wish I could tag whole feeds at once).
• It’s easy to star, share and comment on posts.
• I like the “trends” feature.  I don’t use it for any real purpose, it’s just to satisfy my curiosity every now and then.
• I don’t feel like I have to read everything at once: it’s easy to skip things to read later, and if I haven’t read the last 1000+ posts in a feed, I know it’s time to unsubscribe.

• Certain tasks are difficult.  I have to consult the help page every time I want to add a new folder, because it isn’t intuitive.  Unsubscribing from feeds isn’t intuitive either.
• The formatting is almost entirely removed from the original post.  This is great for skimming, but if I want the full experience of an item I have to open the original page.  It also isn’t great for fashion, art and craft blogs.

• I use iGoogle as my homepage.  I have “gadgets” for all of the things I check regularly: my Twitter and Facebook feeds, Gmail, calendar, RSS feeds for a couple of websites, Google maps, weather, and an overview of GR.
• The interface is clean, and I could change the theme if I wanted to.
• The gadgets can be moved around the page drag-and-drop style.  My information habits change fairly frequently, so it’s great that I can change the layout of my homepage in seconds.

• The dashboard has tabs, so I can categorize my feeds into pages rather than folders.  This is my favourite feature.
• The pages can be viewed by feed (one long chronological list of posts) or by widget (each feed has its own box, which can be easily moved around the page.  Unfortunately, I have to choose one view for my entire dashboard: I would prefer to view certain tabs as one feed and other tabs in widgets.
• RSS feeds in widgets can be viewed in a number of ways.  I can customize each widget, so I have control over whether pictures and other formatting are shown.
• Netvibes is esthetically more pleasing, but not so busy as to distract from my content.
• The Netvibes site is a bit slower than Google.
• It’s more difficult to skim my Netvibes dashboard.