So topic of the week in Social Media class is collaboration, more specifically collaboration with social media. We also worked in groups on a wiki entry. Our group did a wiki entry on social media for youth services:Social Strategies for Youth Service Librarians.
While doing research for the wiki I rediscovered a youth services program using social media and involving collaboration, (or maybe cooperation in some cases. For the difference see Jessica’s excellent post.) The program is TeenRC. It is a social networking site for teens that revolves around reading, writing, literature and other materials. It was developed and is administered by dedicated youth services librarians, but it’s content is teen created. Teens create a catalog of books they have read or would like to read, they can write reviews, share their own writing, have discussions (not just limited to literature) in the forums, and there are regular special events like author visits and interviews, or contests.
It seems like a fantastic site with a lot to offer but libraries have tried to run sites like this before and since without success. Either the administrators lose funding or interest or the teens don’t join. One of the things that really makes this site work is the number of libraries collaborating on the project. There are 332 participating libraries with TeenRC. Not all of those libraries have creative control over the project of course, but they are involved and this means the site is available and suggested to a much larger audience. If you can get a small number of teens to join from each of those libraries you end up with a pretty good user base. If they like it, they will spread the word and you will get more teens joining in. And they are more likely to like it, the more people that are on it because social networking sites grow in social capital as they grow in size. This make a larger social networking site more valuable to an individual and more likely to stick around.
Now I’m only brushing on social capital which is a complex sociological theory and I can’t find the article I originally read about social capital and social networking sites (if anyone has a good link, post it in the comments!). As I understand it and remember it, social capital is the value we derive from our social networks (online, offline, professional, social, familial, etc.). The larger and more connected our networks the more value they have. The strength of the connections is important too, so there have to be a balance between quality and quantity. (Think of the person with 1000 facebook friends, does he really know all those people, does he get anything beyond a number on his page from them.) For a social networking site to be of value it have to have many subscribers, thereby offering it’s users the opportunity to expand and strengthen their social networks.
The same rules apply to libraries trying to use social media in programming. You have to use existing social media with enough social capital, or at least potential, or it won’t offer the user anything and the project will flop from lack of users. Or in the case of TeenRC, create your own social networking site, but collaborate with others to ensure a good start up group size and encourage growth from there. The collaboration also means reaching people geographically distant with is one of the great affordances of online social networks.
I really like TeenRC. I haven’t really gotten into the site because to take full advantage of it you have to be registered and to be a registered user you have to be a teen, but I like the idea and I will follow it’s development. I hope it continues to grow and change and live.