Julie Edwards: Welcome to this webinar on the basics of helping library patrons with social media. I'm Julie Edwards, a librarian and instructional designer with niche Academy, and I'm so happy to introduce our presenter to day. Melody carly melody is a system administrator for the Montana shared catalogue library consortium, a project of the Montana State Library.
Julie Edwards: She has given many presentations and written multiple books and articles about social media and personal digital archiving, including a social media Survival Guide and managing the digital you.
She previously worked at the University of Houston libraries and the Lincoln County public libraries in Montana, and she holds an Mls. From the University of North Texas.
Julie Edwards: In her spare time she fosters kittens and grows vegetables, and I am really happy to have melody with us here to day. You may notice that this webinar sounds a little bit different than our normal webinars. We had a technical glitch with the recording, and so Melody has been gracious enough to join us again to re record this webinar. With that I will turn it over to her.
Melody Karle: Alright! Wonderful! Thank you so much. And I just wanna thank everyone who participated in the original webinar, we got a lot of great feedback and questions. And so even though this is not exactly the same. I'll do my best to give the same great information, so that people who are re-watching or sharing with colleagues or friends will have that information.
So thank you for the introduction. As she said, I am working at the Montana State Library, but I do just want to quickly mention that this presentation is not related to my work at the State Library. I am a system administrator there for libraries throughout the State of Montana.
Melody Karle: But they don't pay me to do social media work or social media websites, or sorry webinars. And so this is part of what I'm passionate about. So I do still do this work in this research. After my time with the public libraries, I just felt there's so much need with social media. So I wanted to make sure to just clarify that. That's not actually my role with the State library.
Melody Karle: What we're going to cover today, some social media basics. I know that most of you probably spend some time on social media, but I want to make sure we're all on the same page
and as you can see on the right, there's a ton of different social media networks. And so we're going to just cover some of the big players, Facebook, Tiktok, Reddit, and Instagram. I'm gonna go through each of those individually. But I'm also gonna touch on some things specific for libraries, including some hands-on things that you might do directly with your patrons, or some ways you can help them if you don't have the time to do that
for each platform we're going to go through. Why, you might want to know about that platform. Why, it's worth your time. Some platform basics. So that's kind of look at some of the screenshots and the features of each
Melody Karle: platforms, so that you understand how to get around, how to look at it, even if it's not a platform that you use. Often we're going to look at privacy and safety, because, as librarians, obviously, we want to know some of those things and our patrons and our users do as well, and then some extra tips for each platform.
We're also gonna cover nearer to the end. What happened to Twitter, now known as X. If you've been following the news, you probably know that Twitter is no longer Twitter. Or maybe you're just like, Wow! What's even happening with that. So we are gonna cover that at the end. So you at least have some basic information about what happened to the Twitter platform. And then we're gonna cover some social media apps of note. Some things that have started to take the place of Twitter and some other things that have been rising in popularity that you should probably know about
Melody Karle: before we get started on all of that stuff. I do just wanna make sure that we have some basic terminology out of the way. So what is a hashtag? What is the handle? How do you tag someone? Or what is tagging? And what is a DM. These are things that I'm hoping some of you know, or you might know some of them. But just to clarify this before we get started.
but is a hashtag
Melody Karle: hashtag is when you add a topic. Basically, you can think about this in terms of subjects for librarian for catalog records. If you have a subject that you want to make it clear that your post is about that subject, you can put a hash sign or a number sign in front of that word, and it does have to be one word. So if it's multiple words, you have to mash it together with no spaces or with underscores.
you might see that sometimes. So in the case I'm putting up on the screen here now, you can see maiden Montana is the hashtag that was used on the post on the left. and if you click on that
you can see every post from Instagram that uses that same hashtag. So this is a way that you can find things on the same topic. And if you're looking at a post that you enjoy, and it has a topic that you want to know more about. You can click on that, and it is linked through so that you can see all the different things that have used that same topic.
Melody Karle: Linked hashtags work on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok, but not on Reddit. Reddit does have some other linking possibilities, but they don't use hashtags the same way. So we'll look at that a little closer as we get through the other platforms.
Melody Karle: A handle is basically a username. So in some cases it is the person's name. So down in the lower left you'll see the rock is the rock with no space, because, again, user names usually don't have any spaces up in the upper left. You'll see somebody used an underscore. That's another way to kind of split up the words without making it look
Melody Karle: without making it not have spaces? So you can choose a username. Usually, when you join the platform, it has to be unique. And so sometimes people don't have the same
Melody Karle: handle on each platform, and that's something important to know, because you may go to different social media and assume it's the same person when, in fact, maybe somebody just got to it first.
Facebook is, of course, the exception to this, as you might know, Facebook requires you to use your real name, which does get confusing, because obviously there can be lots of people who have the same name. Right? So sometimes you'll see somebody with that name, and you'll have to kind of look at all the little icon pictures and try to figure out which person is the person that you know. So it does still allow you to tag those people
Melody Karle: on Facebook using their name. But you usually have to start typing it in. It will find it Instagram and tick Tock. You can start typing in this person's handle, and it will basically tag them so they will get a little notification. They have been tagged or included in the post that you created
Melody Karle: direct messages. DM. Stands for direct messages. Most platforms have a DM. Option, so sometimes you might be like, for example, on Facebook using Facebook messenger, but on Facebook. You can't tell if somebody may be posted directly to you or posted to the live page. And so that's the difference is, one is private direct messages, kind of a private directly to you
Melody Karle: versus posting to the whole public or tagging you, which is still a fairly public, maybe not whole public, but to your friends, depending on how they set the settings in the post
on the right. You can see in the upper right, and I do know this is Twitter, and I'm sorry I still have some slides from Twitter, but it does look very similar now, even now that Twitter is called X.
Melody Karle: In the upper right you can see one has a little envelope, and the one next to it. Does not that just means that the person has turned off direct message and most platforms allow you to turn off direct messaging? And that is great, because sometimes you're on a platform and you want to see things or post things. But you actually don't want to use it as like a chat feature with lots of people on the platform. That's especially true on public platforms. You may not want to just chat with people you don't know, and so you might have that turned off.
This can be very confusing for people, because if you're new to the platform, or you're not very savvy with it. You might be like, well, where's that button? Why is it missing? Well, it may have been that the person who owns the account doesn't want to receive messages that way.
Melody Karle: And so if you don't see a message button or a direct message button when there normally is when that's probably what's happening. Also, just a note. Obviously, you have, like beyonce and weird Al Yankovic here. If you send them a message, it's probably not going to them directly, right? Because they're extremely famous. They probably have a media team answering those. So just be sort of aware that the message button is not infallible.
Melody Karle: I do wanna mention some annoying things to remember as we move forward, social media changes constantly. Obviously the previous screens showed some screens from Twitter which has changed drastically in the last 10 months. So some of my slides, all of them, are hopefully pretty up to date other than the Twitter ones. But I think that you should just keep in mind that it changes so regularly that it's almost impossible to stay up on everything. So give yourself a break as you're learning things that it's always in flux.
Some features exist on mobile apps that don't exist on the computer and browser when you view the same thing, and vice versa. So computer brows browser doesn't exist on Mobile for some things that's especially true on the apps that are built for Mobile. They might have something you can view in the computer or browser, but it may not be as full featured, or vice versa.
Melody Karle: Each platform is annoyingly similar, but they all have their own little quirks, so it can be kind of hard to remember which things have which options. Sorry, that does get very confusing. And I'm just telling you these things so that you're aware of them. When your patrons have these frustrations. Everyone has these frustrations. They're all a little similar. But just a little different.
As I mentioned already, people's handles are not always the same platform to platform that can cause confusion. It can also be a privacy risk. If people are contacting people who they think are another person. And you want to check your privacy features. Often they do change, and Facebook in particular, is horrible about making changes and opting people into things without their knowledge, and then recommending that you just check often to make sure that things are the way you want them
Melody Karle: some other important things to note.
I think this is something I'm gonna talk about throughout the whole presentation. But you should be aware that my feelings about social media.
Melody Karle: I think a lot of people think of social media as being very frivolous or a time waster. It's easy to see why. Right? Because you can waste a lot of time on social media. Just scrolling. People call it doom scrolling for reason to scroll forever and don't get anything done. But for many people social media is really a lifeline that can be true in a lot of cases for people who are socially isolated. I live in Montana, and there are a lot of rural areas, and
people may be disconnected from family and friends. This is also true of the elderly, or people who are older and maybe living alone, empty nesters. They sometimes need social media to connect with people because they don't have the opportunity to connect with people in person. There are also a lot of opportunities on social media connect with people who are complete strangers who either offer support or
Melody Karle: representation or different ways that people get connection online. I'm gonna talk about that as we get into the platforms. But I do just want you to start thinking about social media as more than just a time waster hopefully, because you're here. You're at least a little bit interested in that.
Melody Karle: but also as librarians. The second point here, our shared social culture is being captured in social media. And what I mean by that is that back in the day. We all used to post things, maybe in the newspaper. If you had a birth announcement or a marriage, and you might also write people letters right? Or write them cards. And so much less of that is happening now, because we put a lot of it onto social media.
And what that means as we change platforms, as we switch from one social media to another as time goes by.
Melody Karle: Is that a lot of that social culture is captured on a social media network and not necessarily captured anywhere else.
And so if things close or change, or you stop using a platform and start using another one. There's hypothetically a lot of social cultural loss that happens. So if you have historical documents or handwritten documents in your library or in your archive, what are we gonna be capturing or keeping from this generation for people 100 years from now? So something to kind of keep an eye on as a librarian to be aware that that social
culture is there and hypothetically could be lost.
Just some
Melody Karle: just basic things don't use the same pla pass password on multiple social media sites. That's something that I think a lot of people do. Because they're like, Oh, well, I'll use this for social media. I'll use this for my email, use it, and they might have multiple passwords, but they might use one for all their social media. I suggest that you not do that to protect yourself. 1 one social media site gets hacked.
You want to check your profile from a library computer which I'm guessing a lot of you have access to. If you go to a platform without logging in as yourself, you can see what shows to the public. That's a quick trick for seeing what kind of things might be publicly viewable.
Melody Karle: Also, every platform has a help center with a search feature. This was not the case 10 years ago, and unless a platform is very new, it is the case for all the major platforms. So most of the help that you might need is available through search.
Melody Karle: Some patrons still struggle with finding the search, using the search, or they're not expecting to find it. But as librarians, I'm pretty sure you can make good use of a search feature. So I'm mentioning that here. I also just wanna say, if you wanna jump onto these platforms and observe, most of them don't have any sort of posting requirements, so you can get onto them. Look around, see what how things work. Learn about the platform without actually posting, and that is just fine.
Also the good news managing privacy is easier than it once was once was. I gave this its own slide because it's such a big deal. Back in the day it was really difficult to control or know even how your privacy was being managed on most of these platforms. But because of all the scrutiny that most of these social media platforms have gotten, it's much easier than it used to be.
Melody Karle: So now let's talk about some library specific stuff which hopefully, you guys can make some good use of when I talk about hands-on versus hands off. This is not at all a judgment call. I work in a rural state where we have both city libraries that have multiple people, and then quite a few libraries that just have one person on staff at their library. They have one person who works
the entire time, and we just don't always have time at some libraries to give people direct attention if they need help with social media. Sometimes people do so. I'm covering a little bit of both. If you're a hands-on library and you're able to help people directly. Here are some suggestions.
Melody Karle: If you decide you want to offer hands-on help, there's 2 big questions. Obviously. Do you have the time. Do you have the time? If somebody comes in and says, Hey, I'm trying to figure out my Facebook account. I think I posted this in the wrong place, or people are telling me it's public, and I don't know how to turn that off. Do you have the time to help that person, one on one? Or does somebody on your staff have the ability to do that
Melody Karle: also? Do you have the knowledge? If somebody comes in and says, hey? I need help with Tiktok, and you're not on Tiktok. That's obviously an issue. You can try and help them like you do with everything else. Right? Every day people come in and ask reference questions that we don't know the answer to, so we can usually figure it out as librarians. We know we can seek out that information, but that's also a big use of time, 150.
So if you do identify that, you have the time and the knowledge. And maybe you have a team of people, and you can say, Hey, I know this person's great with Tiktok, and this person uses Reddit. Maybe we can identify who those people are, so that if we get a question on those platforms we know who to send it to.
You can bookmark the help pages and user guides. If these are things that you may need when you're helping people. So for example, if you're going to jump onto the public computer. Or you're using your staff computer. And you want to have those handy. You could bookmark those help pages and find some guides ahead of time on the most used social media platforms, and you can either share those with people so that they can use them themselves, or if you are able to sit down with them, you'd have them handy for pulling up and looking through and solving those problems
Melody Karle: also, if you do have time. But it's sort of in chunks like you don't have time to help somebody if they come in in the middle of a morning rush. But you know that afternoon hours, like, you know, 3 to 5. Actually, that's a bad example, because that's usually when kids are there after school, right? But if there are certain times when you know it's quieter at your library.
Melody Karle: You can set aside those times and say, Hey, we help people with social media and technology between these hours. And so people can come back during those specific times, and if they come in and ask a question, it's not something that's quick to answer. You'd be able to refer them to those specific times.
Melody Karle: Also, if you have an expert either on staff or in the community that might be able to help with those times you can set times and say, you know, we're going to have somebody who knows a lot about this particular thing and schedule it out, and even if nobody shows up having that on a regular basis. If the person's going to be there at work anyway, that can be very convenient for helping patrons who have this need.
But if you're a hands-off library, if you just know you're not going to have a lot of time, which is totally fine, and applies to quite a lot of us.
Melody Karle: You can create or seek out handouts on the most common topics. There are a lot out there. If you search Youtube and limit by date for the past 6 to 12 months, you can find an awful lot of tutorials on just about any of the social media platforms. You're gonna want to have somebody at least take a little bit of time to look at those, to make sure they're accurate, and that they make sense that they'll be something that your patrons can follow. But some of the most common topics that people want to know about.
Melody Karle: or how to delete your account how to save or archive your account, which is only available on some platforms, but the ones that do you want to know how to do that
and basic use how to get around, and especially how to change your password if they've had you know, it's pretty common for somebody. Say, oh, you got messages from me on Facebook. Looks like somebody hacked my account. Don't answer any of those messages. I know I've gotten quite a few of those over the years. So how to change your password is something people need to know.
Melody Karle: If you do find those again, you can save those either as desktop icons on your public facing computers, or, again, have. If you feel like you can print them out and leave them out for people to use sometimes that does use a lot of papers. So it's up to you. But having links on the computers or on the desktop, icons that say like help with Facebook help with. You can put those right there so that any patron can use them. You'll need to probably talk to your it about how to make them persistent, even if you're using like a a system that
Melody Karle: down the computer. But it is possible. Just make sure that you update them. Often, since social media changes so often, usually every 6 to 12 months. And maybe you should set an annual calendar update to hey, check the public links on our public computers or change out the the handouts if needed.
Again, you can always invite an expert to do a program. This includes, if you do have staff, and during their normal hours you don't have time to help them with social media. But one of your staff members is real savvy with Tiktok. Maybe you have a Tiktok evening, and you have them do a couple of extra hours, and you know they come back as the in in house expert. I will warn you that if you do that, then they will be known as the in-house expert, and then everyone will still keep coming to them, so it may
help to have somebody from outside. If you can identify somebody in your community who's great with social, certain social media platforms. If you live in a smaller community, and you just don't have someone locally who you think would be a fit. Maybe there are some webinars or some other things that you could show, live as a program that you would have the Webinar stream and have people come to the library, and then afterwards you could have some discussion or some handouts for those same people.
Melody Karle: And again, if you set hours for hands-on help sometimes that is a very hands-off way to approach it. If you want to be able to offer it occasionally.
Melody Karle: So now we're going to get into the platforms. And although this isn't library specific, the reason I'm going over each platform individually is because the best way we can help our patrons is by having some basic information, because quite a lot of the information that they need is basic. So if you understand the basics of each one of the major platforms, it can help you answer a question pretty quickly, and then maybe you won't have to do a lot more time.
Melody Karle: Please note, I have screenshots on here, some from phones, some from desktop, and it may not look exactly the same as what you were seeing, because different updates, different devices, different account settings may look at slightly different for you. So I did my best, but you may have to click around a little bit sometimes, or might look slightly different. And that's just the nature of the beast. Unfortunately.
Melody Karle: we're gonna start with the number one Facebook. So as you can see from some of the news articles, Facebook takes a lot of heat right? Socially. They get a lot of news stories about how there might have been data breaches that they may have been supporting election issues that they may not have taken things down, that they should have. So I think down at the bottom that what did Facebook do now is a pretty good indicator of of how often Facebook is in the hot seat. So why should we even spend time? If it's so problematic?
Melody Karle: Well, the number one reason to know about Facebook is it is the number 3 visited website in the world. And when I say website, I don't mean the number 3 social media site, I mean the number one, number 3 visited website in the world after Google and Youtube, Facebook is number 3, it is viewed more than Wikipedia, which is crazy. So when you think about that, all of the people, you know. Quite a few of them are getting information from Facebook.
Melody Karle: And that is the problem that has been brought up a lot of the time is that some people might be getting their news. There may not be checking sources
Melody Karle: mit Ctl. And but for better or for worse, a lot of people are using Facebook, and they're on there a lot. And so you should be aware, as an information professional, that this is a place people are getting information whether you like it or not. 150.
Something to note also is, it's not all bad.
Melody Karle: Facebook is one of the largest places where there are online support groups. And these are separate groups. They're not public sites. You usually have to join them. And sometimes they ask you a few questions before you join, and they have user roles within the group.
But if you have, for example, any medical condition, there's probably a Facebook support group for that. If you have insomnia, there's a Facebook support group for that. If you have a cat who has cancer, there is a support group for that. And so people can jump on there and share experiences, share information, share resources.
Melody Karle: and again, for better, for worse, because no saying whether that information is good or bad, but there's no questioning the fact that support is good, and if you're in a small community this can be especially important if you have
Melody Karle: a medical condition that maybe you're not going to find a support group anywhere close to where you live. It may be very helpful to be part of a group that's experiencing those things so that you can get the support you need, the resources you need that you might not find otherwise.
Also, Facebook is number one for ease of use, for nonprofits. Most nonprofits and charities have a fairly big Facebook presence. They make it very easy for people to donate to a charity through Facebook until very recently this month. In fact, Facebook does not take
fees from donations through Facebook. But it's looking like fairly soon, they are going to start doing that. So take from that what you will. But most nonprofits do use Facebook to get their message out. And so that's a pretty big presence on there.
Also small businesses and communities. I know quite a few small businesses in my rural area that have a Facebook page and don't have a website. So if you want to find information about them, you have to use Facebook, we also have a community page from my small town, and it's everything on there from, hey? I need somebody to mow my lawn to. I have like farm fresh eggs that I'm trying to sell or apples from my backyard. Does anybody want apples? That's literally from this morning somebody posted that they have apples to give away in my neighborhood. So
Melody Karle: these are things that people use Facebook for that we don't think about when we think about. Oh, we're just on there. And our uncles posting weird things on Facebook, right? Like, there's, there are numerous other ways that people are using it that are very focused on community and support.
So let's jump into some Facebook basics. I just want to cover some of the things that people ask about. Most often when you make a post on Facebook like the one on the left.
Melody Karle: You can see that there's a little option right underneath my name. That says, Friends, with a down arrow, you can choose to set the privacy of each of your posts.
Melody Karle: In your settings you can set what you want the default to be, but then, if you change it once sometimes, then it will change the default, and people have told me how annoyed they are by this, but it does happen all the time. So if you post to friends. But then one time you post to public, then the next time you post, it might also try to post to public. So it's important to keep an eye out on this dropdown every time you post, and it's very easy to change it after the fact if you accidentally post to the wrong group.
Melody Karle: But you have the option to post to friends, to public. You can post to friends except and choose specific friends you want to exclude. You can choose specific friends that you want to share with. So, for example, one time I posted, and I just wanted to post to some of my library friends, and so I chose just library folks. You can also choose only me.
Melody Karle: There are a few ways that people are using this, but I think one of the most common is, you might post something as kind of a placeholder that you might post later. But some people also use Facebook as kind of a personal archive. I, personally wouldn't do that. But it is an option to create a post on your Facebook feed that only you can view
Melody Karle: once things are posted. You can see in the post on your page what settings you have. And so in this case, on the left, I did really mean to share this article about Missoula's beautiful library? To the public. So you can see the little world is right next to the post, right next to the beginning of that arrow on the left.
Melody Karle: And so this is posted to anyone who finds my page. Anyone from the public can see this post. If I did want to change that, I could click on the little globe and edit privacy, and then choose from there if I wanted it to just be friends or any of those other settings that I already mentioned.
Melody Karle: The other thing that people get upset about is that someone has tagged them right like I didn't wanna be tagged, or they tagged me in something stupid. And now all my friends are seeing this thing. So on the right, you can see I have been tagged. Somebody mentioned me in a post about funny book blurbs, and so if I wanted to remove the tag or hide it from my profile. I can do that now again, in settings I can
Melody Karle: create settings that change the default. If somebody tags me, and I don't want it to post to my page ever I can change that setting, but if it's already happened, I can also click on this and remove the tag or hide it from my profile. And this is something. I have seen people come into a public library and say, this person is talking about me online, and I don't wanna have my name associated with. Can I remove this? How do I do this? And that's something you can help with
some navigations, bit basics. Facebook over the years has become so deep with where things are in the settings, because again, they have taken a lot of heat for making sure that they're as privacy conscious as possible whether that's true or not, and they have given you a lot of control over your settings and privacy. But now, as a result, there's so many different places, and in some cases it. The settings may be in more than one place, because they know people were looking in more than one place, and that can be confusing because they're the same settings. But you can get at them from 2 different places.
The most common places to find settings in Facebook
Melody Karle: are under the menu you can see on the right. It's the 3 little dot or 3 little lines, the burger
Melody Karle: on the down arrow in the upper right. So the blue circle and on individual posts which I've already shown you, some of. So you can control some things from there, and some settings are actually on other people's pages. And usually those are things related to how you interact with that person or that organization. If it's an organization's page, and you can set some of those settings from their pages on how you interact with them.
Melody Karle: One thing I see people get confused about a lot is whether someone is a person or an organization or entity. So in this case, Bob is a person. This is my cousin Bob. He is an individual person. I am friends with him, so you can see when I go to his page. It has his picture, and underneath it says, Unfriend. Take a break or edit friends list.
Melody Karle: I am interacting him with him as a friend. And so if
I want to change how I
Melody Karle: interact with him, I can click on the 3 little dots on the right, and it will give me all the options for how I follow him. If I click on following it will say, unfollow default or C first
Melody Karle: default is what happens by default, obviously, and that just means I will see some of his posts mixed in with things, but if I don't want to see what he's posting, I can click unfollow without friending him, so that means, or without unfriending him. Excuse me, so that means I can remain friends with him. He won't know that we that I am not following him. But I won't see all of his posts.
Melody Karle: So in the case of especially family members, who, you feel sort of obligated for being Facebook friends with. You might stay friends with them, but maybe you will never see their posts. If you unfollow, you can also do the opposite and click, see first. So if you have a best friend or someone you wanted to see every single thing they post. You would choose C first. Otherwise they'll sort of just be mixed in wherever and it's based on Facebook's algorithm, which is sort of a mystery of how you see people end. In what order.
Melody Karle: unlike my cousin, Bob Cuddle Clones is not a person. Cuddle Clones is a business that I'm rather fond of, that makes tiny stuffed animals that look exactly like your pet, which is a ridiculous concept that I love.
Melody Karle: So Cuddle Clones is something that I like, and I have liked it on Facebook. I am also following Cuddle Clones, so I will see their posts if they make them. However, if I want to like the company, but not see their posts, I can do that I can like, but I can unclick on following if you click on following, you will see. Get notifications. Or again, you can see first or unfollow. So you have those options, and in the case of again
living in a smaller town, or if you have friends who have businesses, you may want to like them to show support. But you may not want to see all those posts. And this can really help to unclutter your Facebook feed, which is one of the complaints that many people have about Facebook
Melody Karle: up in the upper right. And again, this is on Mobile. So it is on the upper right, still in the desktop.
Melody Karle: our desktop, Facebook as well. But if you click on the upper right. You can see your privacy shortcuts, your settings, your activity log and your log, and if you go to your privacy shortcuts.
Melody Karle: you will actually get an option for privacy checkup.
And this is one case where Facebook has done it pretty well. There are several options under here that Facebook offers that people can walk through to see, to answer the people's questions about privacy, and there's no reason for you, as a librarian, to recreate the wheel. If this already exists. So going to the privacy checkup, if you have a patron who says, you know, I'm on Facebook. But I'm really worried that things aren't set correctly like. Could you help me.
Melody Karle: I would actually put them right here and say, You know, these are. This is a tutorial for going through privacy checkup for your whole account. So this is an easy way to help somebody with Facebook.
Melody Karle: Here are some other things that you may be looking for. This is. Again, there are tons and tons of settings in Facebook, but this is where some of the main things are found. So reaction preferences and notifications are under preferences.
Melody Karle: Audience, invisibility.
Add preferences and browsing are under permissions. We're gonna go through each one of those reaction preferences. So this is when you see a post, and you give it a little heart or a thumbs up or a crying face. Those are reactions, it.
Melody Karle: And what we've learned over time is it's sometimes reactions upset people. This can be especially true on some platforms where somebody maybe thinks that they need to get a lot of likes or a lot of responses to feel validated. And I'm not gonna give any sort of judgment there. Sometimes people have weird responses if they put out an emotional response on Facebook and not enough people maybe respond. Or however, they're feeling about
Melody Karle: that is fine. That's a personal and individual thing. But if you want to turn off those reactions. You can, or you can turn off the ability of other people to see them.
Melody Karle: Some other things that people are frequently looking for in Facebook is who can post on your profile. So if you want somebody to be able to come to your page and like, say, Happy birthday, or to say, hey, we had a great time hanging out with you last night. You can control that. You can set it to just friends, or you can set it, however you like, and go in and and turn it to no one, if that's what you prefer.
Melody Karle: Who can see what other people post on your profile is also something. So if you want just friends to be able to see when friends post on your profile and not public, or if you want friends to be able to post, but no one else can see it. That's fine, too
Melody Karle: tagging. Earlier. I mentioned when you see a post that you're tagged in. You can control these from there, but from here you can set the default of who can tag you and who can see it?
Melody Karle: And down at the bottom reviewing. If you want to review tags, people add to your posts before the tags appear, you can do that, and then approve them or not approve, or you can review posts you're tagged in before the post appear in your profile. So those are all things you can turn on or off
Melody Karle: advertising is also something really fascinating that Facebook gives you access to under settings. Setting some privacy ads, add topics. You can see all the things that Facebook thinks you like, which is very weird. And this is not at all a complete list. My list of things I like is very, very long, but I do think this is a good example. For example, I do like garage sales, and I do like animal welfare and travel and arts and music.
Melody Karle: national parks, and historical sites. Facebook totally has my number, but up at the top I also have stove, and that is because last year we were shopping for a new stove, and Facebook was apparently tracking me through the Internet and knew I was looking for a stove. However, it didn't track me well enough to know that we got one. So it kept showing me stove advertisements. And so I came in here, and I said, You know what I want to see fewer stove advertisements, please Facebook. And and you can do that. You can't get rid of them completely.
Melody Karle: but you can say no preference or see less. And so that gives it a hint that you're not going to be shopping for a stove via Facebook. It is also just really good, I think, for all of us to be aware of what these companies have on us. So if you're curious, you can go in and take a look and see what kind of add topics Facebook thinks would work with you.
Melody Karle: You can also erase your memory. This is a reason that I've heard for people stopping using Facebook, even though they enjoy it, is that occasionally they will see one of those memories pop up that says 10 years ago on this date. Here's what you were doing. And for those of us who have been on Facebook for a very long time. This can be weird. Sometimes it'd be like. That's a weird thing that I posted 10 years ago. But for some people, especially people who've experienced loss.
Melody Karle: this can actually be fairly traumatic. If you've lost a loved one like a child or a spouse, and you see photos of them popping up in these memories that can be a very difficult thing to deal with. And so you have the option to go in and say, I don't want to see those pop-up memories anymore.
Melody Karle: If you wanna take a break from people. Again, a comment that I get from people on Facebook is there. They have people. They're friends with that. They just really don't wanna see, as I said earlier, you can set it to unfollow. So you don't see any of this person's posts, but you can also now snooze them for 30 days. So that is exactly what it sounds like. You can go into their account. You can click on the 3 little dots, and you can snooze the person for 30 days. That means temporarily stop seeing their posts.
Melody Karle: If you have been on Facebook for a long time like me, you can also go back and clean this stuff up mit Ctl, and so you might want to go in and download your information before you do a cleanup, so that you have everything you can go in and create a file that will then open in any web browser. It's an HTML file, and you can store that on your computer for viewing anytime. 2
Melody Karle: but then, later, after that, you can click on your icon and go back through the years and either hide things from your profile which archives them, or you can delete them. So that kind of makes it cleaner. If somebody is looking back at your Facebook page through the past. I don't know how many I mean, it's been a really long time Facebook's been around. There may be things on there that you may not want on there anymore. That just goes without saying
so let's switch gears to tick. Tock Tiktok is not the number 2. Most use social media platform, but it is very popular, right? We hear about it a lot in the news, especially here in Montana, where we have become the first state to ban Tiktok. That doesn't happen until January, and even then they are only finding the companies that provide the download. So people in the State of Montana, they said. They're not
going to penalize anyone for using tick tock, but the companies that allow the download will get fined. It is in litigation. There are some lawsuits pending. So we'll see what happens. I think it will be a really interesting case either way with what happens.
Melody Karle: But Tiktok's just dancing in cat videos. Right? So why should I care? I put here trends, teens and insecurity. Oh, my, because really, that's how it feels sometimes. And definitely depending on who you're following or what you like. It will continue to show you similar videos. So definitely, you that might be all you're seeing is dancing in cat videos, and if you enjoy that great.
Melody Karle: But there are quite a lot of things on Tiktok beyond that. So some things to note about Tiktok, only about half of users upload videos. Quite a few people are just there to watch the videos. That's not nearly as significant as Youtube, which I think is more like 90 95% of people never create a video and just there to watch or to learn. But quite a lot of people are just there to look at things, and that's fine. You can create. An account if you want to, and take a look.
It's popular, but there's also a lot of educational materials on there. There are things that educate you about certain specific topics like there are people who are teaching you how to do certain exercises with better form, and there are people who have a specific topic or science that they want to teach you about in short, snippets, and that's very exciting, and then down at the bottom representation and support. So I want to highlight one person that I follow. I'm not gonna give you the exact screen name. But there's a person that I follow on Tiktok.
who actually has day-to-day videos with his elderly father, who is suffering from short-term memory loss.
Melody Karle: and what I find really fascinating about this account is that he will post conversations that he has with his dad, who is generally lucid, can care for himself, can feed himself, can dress himself, but day-to-day forgets
Melody Karle: mit Ctl. And who he is or where he is, and it's been really fascinating to watch the conversations that he and his family have with this elderly person who's going through something, and how their family deals with it. And I think it's, you know, interesting to think about 1020 years ago, if you were someone who was dealing with something like that, 123,
you might feel very isolated. You might feel like there wasn't anyone else going through something like you, or you could read about things that people had experienced. Or maybe you would find someone else who had gone through it. There might be a physical support group you could go to. But I think it's really interesting to see these videos so that people can see representation of other people who are going through something similar. And so he's put that out there for them, so that someone else who's
mit Ctl. And experiencing something, can see examples of the conversations he has, can see real life, things that are happening. And I think there's a lot of support and representation happening on Tiktok. If you're following those sorts of people.
Melody Karle: course not. Everybody is right. So let's move on some basics of Tiktok. So I did use the app here instead of going to the website. And we'll talk about the website in a minute. But you can see here a lot of apps use a very similar style. You have things down along the bottom. That's your home, which is just the basic feed that you see, nonstop videos discover and search
Melody Karle: post. That's if you wanna add something inbox and notifications and your profile. So those are pretty straightforward, but we'll go through them a little bit more. Also you can see the caption in the lower left has a see more, and if you click on that you can see the full caption as well as a ton of those hashtags that we talked about earlier and just like other platforms. You can click on those to see more things that use those hashtags
Melody Karle: if you click on the little swishy arrow there on the right. That's the share button it will allow you to share on multiple other platforms depending on things you might have on your phone. You can also save the video. And this is a feature on Fee on Tiktok that I think a lot of people don't know about it is set by the Creator. So if the creator of the video doesn't want you to be able to save. That's just fine. And it's not gonna be available.
But if they are allowing it, you can save this video, and it will actually save as a video file to your phone, which then you can keep or share in some other way, as someone who thinks about that lost culture. If I am really concerned about this cat video being lost to time, I can download it and keep it in my own personal stash, or it on a more practical level. If I wanna share it with someone, who doesn't use Tiktok or I wanna show it to someone
who doesn't have a device. I can do that without having to scroll back through Tiktok and find the video.
Melody Karle: You can also do other things in here like, add it to favorites and report the video. If there's something wrong with it, and then on the right, you can see if I click on that circle that has the person's face on it. It will tell you more about the creator of this video. And I can see every single video they have created. I can also see that they're supporting the Aspca, and that they have a lot of other options in here. You can follow the person from here. You can also message the person using A direct message, option.
Melody Karle: something to know, both related to privacy, but also just for practicality. You can see Tiktok from a desktop computer from a web browser. You don't have to log in, and you don't have to download anything. So I would be really curious to know how they think anyone would track me if I just went to the website and watched a video. Now, of course, yes, they can track you through cookies and other things on your computer. But you could hypothetically open up
Melody Karle: a private tab and look at a video. Most of the videos on Tiktok. I haven't found any yet that weren't available just by looking on the web browser version. If you know how to search for them or find the username of the person who created the video. So you can see here I am not logged in up in the right. It's asking me to log in, not logged in. And yet I viewed multiple videos this way and have poked around quite a bit this way. And so
you're someone who's curious about Tiktok or wants to view a video. But you are concerned about downloading the app. This is a way you can do that.
Melody Karle: Other things about Tiktok privacy to be aware of. If you are going to post Tiktok videos for yourself or for your library, or you're helping someone who's creating videos. They do tend to be more personal and potentially offer more private information without meaning to. And that is because people tend to shoot videos in their own homes in their own areas.
I do suggest that you never post in front of your house, where your address might be visible, or where your streets or cross streets might be visible. People are really great at tracking that information down. Also, you watch your videos after you make them. I suggest you do that instead of live posting and look for bulletin boards, fridge lists, sticky notes with passwords on them in the background. All that personal information that you don't want to share. Just take a look and make sure they're not in the background of your video.
Melody Karle: Also, if you're on vacation. And this goes for all social media. Actually, I suggest you wait till you're home to post so that people don't think your home is vacant. That puts you at risk of break. Ins
Melody Karle: Tiktok does have some privacy control and some ads personalization. But it's pretty minimal compared to Facebook. It's pretty easy to just go into privacy and take a look. But there's not nearly the level of chaos or not chaos, but the level of depth that the Facebook privacy optors you.
Melody Karle: You can set some things where, if you want to turn off direct messages again, like, I said before, this is possible. You can also go in and change different filter if you want to filter, spam for offensive comments. If you don't want to see things that use certain keywords, and you can do all of that to maybe prevent you from seeing things you don't want to see on the site.
Melody Karle: So now we're going to talk a little bit about Reddit. And I would say, Reddit is usually the platform that people don't know much about, so I'm glad I'm able to cover it a little bit.
Melody Karle: It is Number 18, and the most visited websites in the world. That means more thanweather.com, which is pretty impressive. A lot of people use reddit, but you might not even know about it, because it tends to be somewhat anonymous. It's not usually a place where people are connecting with family and friends. It is the birthplace of a lot of memes and world news and breaking news. People post there so that they can get the up to the minute information and then it sometimes gets shared out more widely on other networks.
Melody Karle: It is step 2 in the Internet underworld. What I mean by that is that a lot of the crazy things that happen online, usually I would say, start at 4, Chan, which is a fairly chaotic unmoderated social network that I'm not next, and I'm not recommending you. Go to. It can be a little offensive and chaotic, but very often things there then come to Reddit and kind of clean up a little bit before they turn into memes on the Internet.
Melody Karle: Reddit is very fun. It's anonymous, it's weird. It has a little bit of everything. And if it's someplace that you want to go, that if you're not connecting with family and friends or famous people, but you want to just see what's going on out in the world. There's a topic out there on Reddit for you.
Melody Karle: You don't need an account to use Reddit. Most of the pages you can get to. It does get annoying, because it will continue to pop up, to ask you to create an account or to log in. But you can go and view things.
So if you wanted to go to animals being jerks which you can see here on the right, and the link is at the bottom. You can do that, and you can go see a huge sub topic of animals being jerks to each other. In fact, even if you don't, if even if you want an account, you don't actually need an email address to sign up for Reddit. But if you do forget your login, they won't be able to email it to you if they don't have your email. So be aware of that. However, you could just create another account if you wanted to. After that
Melody Karle: some of the basics
topic on Reddit is called a subreddit. So there's a subreddit about just about anything, and you can see here
Melody Karle: this is the subreddit A. WW. This is a whole subreddit called Awe, which is cute things like this cube cat wearing a bow tie.
Most colleges in larger towns have a subreddit of their very own. So that's a place you might want to log into to see what's going on around your town or your city. And those little guys up in the upper right. If you do create an account, they are called a snoo, and you will create your own little snoo. It's kind of an avatar for the site
Melody Karle: down along the bottom. You have just similar to Tiktok home. Discover Post, DM. And notifications.
Melody Karle: Some reddit basics just like any site you can be there to waste a lot of time like on the left, where you're like, what is wrong with my dog
Melody Karle: or on the right. This is a subreddit for Glacier National Park, which I use all the time. It is a place where really I can't think of any other place on the Internet. That would be a better place to get up to the minute information about Glacier. The park website does a great job giving you basic information. But if you want to post up there to be like, Hey, I am hiking this trail, and I was hoping to go up tomorrow, but I don't know if it's clear of snow yet.
Melody Karle: Somebody will have been up there, and we'll be like, you know, I did that a couple days ago. There was one area that had deep snow, but the rest of it was clear. And people are like, Okay, cool, great. We're heading up there.
Melody Karle: This is a really good place where everyone who's interested in Glacier National Park. Ha! Is gathered on this one sub red. And so if I want to see this, I can go straight to the subreddit. If I just want to waste time, I can browse cat and dog videos right? So there's both there and depending on where you go when you get to Reddit you can control that.
Melody Karle: If I want to see all of the different subreddits that I have chosen to follow, and I don't have to follow them to see them, but if I want to follow them I can. I can just be on home at the top, and that will show me all my subreddits mixed together. If I want to get to a specific subreddit that I follow, I can click on the 3 little lines and see all the lists. So you can see I've got Montana. I've got self sufficiency. I've got totally not robots. If I want to see one of those specifically, I can click on it and just look at that feed.
Melody Karle: If I want to see them all mixed together, I can stay on home, or if I want to search up at the top. I can go to subreddits that I don't follow or find posts specific to one topic. There's also news and popular. Those are pretty exactly what they sound like, but they are created by Reddit. So there's a little bit more control in the algorithm from the social media app there.
Melody Karle: Reddit is the most private of the top 5 most popular social media sites. Reddit accounts do not require an email, so that is pretty private. But you should be aware that even though it's anonymous, doesn't mean that you should be posting lots of things about illegal activity. They will give your IP address to the police. If you're reporting about illegal activity. Also, if you post a lot under the same handle and you give lots of clues, people have been able to piece things together. For example, there have been
numerous cases of people posting offensive or horrible things on Reddit, and people finding out who they are based on their activity and then doxing them online because it is the Internet. Doxing means putting your private information out there in the public.
Melody Karle: But if you do need to rant anonymously about something like the one below, you can go ahead and do that. And this caused a huge conversation about geocaching that lots of people had strong opinions on. So this is a great place for your anonymous non-illegal romance.
Melody Karle: just like Tiktok. It's not nearly as full featured on privacy as Facebook. But that's partially because it is a lot more private to start with. But you can see their policy, and you can control a couple of the settings here, but very, very basic settings compared to some other social media networks.
Melody Karle: some tips. You can deactivate your account anytime. It will remove your handle name from your posts, but won't automatically remove your posts. So if you want your posts to disappear, you have to go to them individually and manually delete them, and then you could deactivate your account. So just keep that in mind. There's no easy way to get rid of that trail on the Internet. If you post a lot on Reddit.
Melody Karle: also something that people like is to be able to open any links that they click on. If you're using Reddit for news, or to find more information sometimes it's nice to have the links open in a browser instead of opening the app
Melody Karle: you can also ask Internet Archive to archive a subreddit. So if there's something that is particularly important again, this is my social media, archiving bit of our shared culture could be lost bit. But you can find a page that maybe is is important news, worthy, historically relevant. And you can ask the Internet archive to archive that specific subreddit. And that is great. It's a permalinka.
So it's public. You can easily share on SMS email or other social media. Again, if you're there a lot, and you're not logged in, it does kind of bother you. It pops up a lot, but you can view all those things, and you can use the Permalink to share pretty easily as well.
Melody Karle: So last, but not least, in the Big 4 that I'm going to copy to our cover today is Instagram. We're going to go over briefly. I'm guessing a lot of you are knowledgeable of Instagram. It is also owned by Meta, which now owns threads which is a Twitter competitor. And Whatsapp which many of you probably know about. We'll talk about both those briefly at the end.
Melody Karle: Instagram is a lot of photographs. Right? It's mainly it's not Facebook, because even though you can post Facebook pictures, Instagram is very visually focused, it's meant for people to post images with less text. It's very popular with all age groups, but especially young adults. And so it is important to be aware of it, because it is where a lot it is the social media of choice for a lot of young adults.
It's best known for being the platform for influencers who like to post photos, and they are called that for a reason. They do post things on there that become news afterwards.
Melody Karle: Some Instagram basics.
Melody Karle: You want to learn hashtags. If you are managing an Instagram, account for yourself or other people, and you want it to get more views. Hashtags are huge on Instagram. You do not have to follow people who follow you. This is not a reciprocal platform. Several people follow their friends and their friends follow them, but if that's not what you're using it for. If you're sharing photos for the big, wide world you don't have to follow anybody on here. So it works a little bit like Twitter used to. You can choose your followers, and they can choose you
Melody Karle: up in the upper right. You you can go to post activity and following. So it's a little bit different. The post is at the top. and the 3 little dots there, which are almost hidden, is where you go to share your profile, link to a profile, add to favorites, hide or unfollow. So if this is someone you want to interact with like this gardening greener, you can choose to share the whole profile, you can link to it, etc. So that's something to know about and how to interact with
Melody Karle: specific accounts.
The basics down along the bottom post was not along the bottom, so that instead, you have reels, which is the videos that Instagram is pushing right now, they're making it a lot more about videos lately. And the algorithm is right now, favoring videos. Just so, you know. So videos are more likely to get shown than photos if they're openly public
Melody Karle: along the bottom. You also have your home, your search, a shop, and your profile
Melody Karle: underneath each post. You can also like it. You can comment or you can share. And then again, I have seen several people who didn't know this, and I was surprised. But I think it's good to point out that if you have a post that has little dots along the bottom, that means there are multiple photos in the post, and you can swipe left or right to see additional images or videos.
Melody Karle: Once you click into your profile you have additional options. I think it's very tricky of them. You have to click into your profile in order to see the settings. So once you click on your profile, then you can get the 3 little bars at the top that go to settings.
While you're in your profile. You can see your posts, your other videos, posts that have tagged you, and you can see everything scrolling down your followers in your following
Melody Karle: your settings. Once you click into those again, not as busy as Facebook, even though it's a Facebook company, but still much more busy than tick, tock and reddit it does have more of a Meta feel about controlling your data. You can review each section occasionally, since they do change. But you will find that this is pretty similar to the Facebook topics. You can also see your ads, just like Facebook, you can control the posting, etc.
Melody Karle: So privacy. Another thing to keep in mind, I think this is something that when I mentioned earlier that things look different, depending on what you're looking at and how you're looking at it. This is the sort of thing that confuses our patrons and confuses a lot of us frankly. So on the left you have orphan angels, cat sanctuary, which is someone that I actually choose to follow, and when I click on the 3 little dots it gives me a menu of options.
but on the right is Cuddle clones, which is a business, and when I click on the 3 little dots, I get a different menu, because that is an advertisement on the right.
Melody Karle: And I think this is what really confuses people is, they look very similar, but one is an ad. So the menu options are different and the choices are different. And so this is why it's so hard to train people right on on learning social media, because everything that looks the same isn't the same
Melody Karle: Instagram privacy. You, of course, have choices like controlling your posts. Who can see things? Who can mention you using your handle. So these are things you can control, just like on Facebook.
Melody Karle: Instagram tips. If you post to get noticed, you have to learn to use hashtags. Some Instagram posts have 30 hashtags like, really, you want to identify what hashtags apply to your post and find them, and then and use them consistently. A lot of people keep them in a different file and a notes file on their phone and then copy and paste if they post about the same sort of things over and over again.
Melody Karle: Yes, you can view Instagram from a desktop. But I didn't even put. I mean, I put this screenshot here. You do have to log in unlike Tiktok, and once you log in, you can't post photos from Instagram on a browser and the functionality is pretty limited. But you can see your account, and you can see some other posts. So yes, you can use Instagram on a desktop computer or a laptop, but it is really very much not full featured. So keep that in mind
Melody Karle: also, just a little. Did you know the first photo posted on Instagram was a dog near a taco stand? There's not a great photo. I don't own the rights to it, so I didn't post it here. But you can find it, I'm sure.
Melody Karle: Finally, let's get to what is happening. What happened with Twitter? If you haven't paid attention. Or if you're not completely clear on this, Twitter is now X. It says down here Elon Musk purchased Twitter 10 to 11 months ago and has basically slowly changed the platform quite quickly changed the platform over those 1011 months to be something completely different. It has rebranded to X,
Melody Karle: but it is quite messy, even though it is called X. You will still find reference to Twitter just about everywhere on X's own site as well as all over the Internet. Including this article, which is about Twitter being dead, using a little twitter thing so that you can share it. So that's a pretty good indicator of how messy the Twitter situation is at present.
Melody Karle: Why do we care at all? Well? Twitter was a very large public platform that was often cited in news often used as a talking point across multiple, different places.
Melody Karle: It was a huge public platform. And the reason I have this Chadwick Boseman post is, it is the most posted, or, excuse me, the most interacted with the post ever in the history of Twitter. And now that Twitter has died, it will remain that. This is the announcement of Chadwick Boseman's death.
Melody Karle: And the Library of Congress even took note at 1 point that Twitter was so important, culturally and socially. And so they were for a long time archiving every tweet, and then in 2,017 found that that was no longer tenable and stopped doing that. There are quite a few people who still archive parts of Twitter or did until it became less
Melody Karle: possible. Twitter is no longer as easy to navigate. It's no longer as easy to interact with without logging in and so, unfortunately, we're seeing some loss and quite a few people, including myself, who spent a lot of time on Twitter, are definitely feeling a weird kind of mourning about this place where we traditionally shared, and now has very much changed.
Melody Karle: I'm not going to get into a lot of details, because it really changes pretty constantly at this point, but it has become sort of a less inviting place for a lot of people.
Melody Karle: So what should you do? And what should you know about Twitter number one know that it has changed now it's X, and that it's in flux. So it's complicated. But know that. So that you can explain that to patrons and coworkers. Now, when you're on a news site and you click on share on Twitter or something like that. It takes you to X, and it's very confusing. So definitely be aware that the situation is going on. If your library had a Twitter account, you may want to reassess and look at it, whether the platform is still the right place for your library.
Melody Karle: If your library links to twitter through the blog, catalog, or other media and uses the little bird logo especially, you probably want to change that they need to change, to not be
Melody Karle: showing the little bird anymore. And if you no longer want to link to X, that's fine, too. so, and the rest. So these are just some platforms that we need to be aware of.
Melody Karle: What about Snapchat and Linkedin? I didn't include them, because Snapchat and Linkedin actually aren't as popular as news would probably have you believe Linkedin is a platform that's mainly used for professionals, and so it definitely has its place in the world, but it's not even in the top 20. This is the top 10 of all used websites, and I could show you the next 10, but I didn't, because it gets into a lot of honestly Chinese websites that are very popular that we are not aware of.
But Snapchat and Linkedin are not even in the top. 20. Tik tok is number 15, world wide, and number 4 of all the social media platforms. If you don't include direct messaging. Reddit is Number 18.
Melody Karle: What about Wechat and Whatsapp? Are they? Social media? It's a little complicated. So you should be aware that they exist again. But they are mainly platforms that are for direct messaging. They're standalone direct messaging apps. And so they're similar to just texting someone or video chat chatting someone with an app. 165
Melody Karle: but they are an app specific for people usually who know one another, in most cases chatting with a small group, or directly they are social, but because they're so focused and don't really have a lot of public interaction. They just aren't in the same group as most social media. So some people consider them to be something sort of a little different, even though you could call them social media. They're a little bit different.
Melody Karle: What about the new twitter threads, mastodon, blue sky? These are all things that have said. They may take the place of Twitter. It's really too off too early to tell what might reach the level of popularity that Twitter had. And these 3 apps may get there, or they may not like be real, which was super popular last year, and now is just sort of hanging on there, but not getting as much news. It may just be a flash in the pan. It's hard to tell with social media what's going to become crazy popular.
Some platforms I haven't mentioned yet, but are worth a quick mention. 4 Chan. Actually, I did mention them very often referred to as the gutter of the Internet. I caution you that you probably should not go there, but you should know that it exists. 4. Chan is an unmoderated open, anonymous platform, but for people to post things, so there's quite a lot of offensive material there. And yet it is completely unmoderated. A lot of people go
Melody Karle: there because they like no no moderation. Ancestry, you probably know, as a research tool, but it also is a social network for people to work on social genealogy together family trees together, you can share information and connect, and especially with DNA. Now, a lot of people are using it to connect with long-lost family
Melody Karle: discord. Used to be a lot for gamers to connect online while they were gaming, but now has taken on a huge role for groups and direct messaging. And you can invite people to a group discord to discuss things. So it's it's definitely looking a little bit more like it's taking a big role in social media
goodreads is a book tracking social network owned by Amazon that many of us use to share what we're reading
Melody Karle: next door you may be familiar with. The the site that is used with a lot of neighbors complaining about things, but it also can be very helpful. It does use address verification. So the people on next door are the people who are living closest to you. It's popular in some areas and not in others. Pinterest still exists, not
Melody Karle: still not very social, but it is a place where you can collect images and share them with other people on virtual boards. If you're a knitter or a fiber artist, you might be interested in the social media network for those groups. Rivalry and then twitch has been hugely popular lately as a live, streaming gamer service on. I just watched this scrabble players championship on twitch. So it's not just first person shooters, but it's a place where you can watch someone gaming and chat in the side
Melody Karle: some final takeaways. I just want to remind you that everyone uses social media differently. So just to as you're helping, people don't assume they're using it in a certain way. Just help them find the tools they need as librarians. You probably are already doing that, but just
Melody Karle: taking away the assumptions from social media and reminding, reminding yourself that it's not just a frivolous tool. It's something that can be used in a lot of ways that are very helpful and important to people.
Melody Karle: If you want to keep up with social media, mashable digital culture feed is something that I follow, and Techcrunch's social feed. Those are both great places to follow, and you can search Youtube for tutorials on platforms and then use the filters which I've circled there to find things just in the last 6 to 12 months.
Melody Karle: Here are some of my sources which will be shared with the slides
Melody Karle: and some more about me, including some books that I have written, and my website, my Linkedin, if you want to connect. And if you want to see cat videos and photos, you can follow me on Tiktok or Instagram. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time, and I don't know if we have time for questions. I think I went a little longer than the first recording.
Julie Edwards: Thank you so much. Melody. This has been fantastic. We really appreciate it. I really appreciate you doing this again.
Julie Edwards: We there are a few questions we can get into them if you want. We don't have to.
Julie Edwards: I'm fine, too. I just didn't know I know it's recording, but if you wanted to keep it sharp under an hour. I did go a few minutes longer. That's okay. I think we can. We can get to these. They were pretty brief. And I think they were questions that will resonate with a lot of people. So the first one is, if you have an older patron who wants to stay involved in social media. What platform would you recommend introducing them to?
Yes, and II will try to answer it as close to the question the first time. I do highly recommend Tiktok for that and the reason being is that Tiktok is actually pretty easy to get
Melody Karle: connected with and a lot of people don't post. And so you can follow different groups there. Yes, you can see all the things that are popular. But if you actually search for and seek out things like social media topics or technology topics. You can follow some of those creators to keep up to date on some of those things in a very visual, I mean, videos are just so easy for people to interact with. So if you're an older patron or an older person, and you're trying to stay up on
watching a video is is pretty easy to help you keep up with those things, and Tiktok also usually keeps it pretty brief. So that's a good way to stay involved, and you never have to post
Melody Karle: and you can do it without sharing a lot of information.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. Someone else asked, do you think it's a good idea to take a deep dive into one platform? And if you do that, can you apply the skills you learn there to the others.
Melody Karle: So if you were, gonna choose one platform to take a deep dive on, it would probably be Facebook for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is still the most used social media platform in the world. And second, it has a lot farther to dive into, because it's been around so long. It has so many more options and features to be aware of, so being aware of those and savvy on those can really be helpful.
I would say that you can definitely apply a lot of that same sort of information to the other platforms. And at this point, you know, Facebook
Melody Karle: is a Meta company. So they also own Instagram and threads and Wechat. And so all of those things. Or excuse me, Whatsapp.
All of those things are going to have fairly similar settings and setup because they're all Meta companies. And so that would help you across multiple platforms if you learned Facebook.
Melody Karle: and then, of course, all the platforms are a little similar in how they set up their help and how they set up some of their privacy. So yes, I do think it could help with multiple platforms, and if you chose one to do a deep dive, it would be Facebook.
Melody Karle: Excellent. And one more. Someone was asking, I administer our library social media account, but it is linked to my personal account. Is this a good idea. Can I separate them? Should I separate them? Is there best best practice here?
Melody Karle: Sure. So it sounds like that might be best practice, which is all organization and business pages on Facebook do not have their own login. They require people to be signed up as administrators, which is pretty tricky of Facebook, because that means people have to have their own account in order to be the administrator on a business or organization page. That's how it's set up what I recommend to people. And and
Melody Karle: it's not actually that risky for you as an administrator. If that's how you have it set up. People who visit the libraries. Page cannot see your personal information and won't even know that you are an administrator. So that's fine. I would recommend that multiple people be administrators on one page, so that when and if you need to leave your personal account won't be the only personal account that is set up as an administrator for
Melody Karle: library, and if that's not how you set up. If I misunderstood the explanation.
wouldn't recommend starting, for example, what people have done in the past.
Melody Karle: Like a personal page for the library that is set up more like a human page. Facebook has been better and better at finding those and telling people. They have to turn them into the other type of page. And that's because that is a privacy risk. If you set up like a person, and you name it. You know the the whatever library but it can be friends with people instead of being something that they can like and follow. That does unfortunately create a privacy risk. Because when you're friends with someone, you can see their posts.
whereas if somebody likes or follows your library. That library cannot see your posts.
Melody Karle: so if that's the way you have it set up, you, you really should change it. But if you are set up as an administrator that is actually less of risk. And yes, that's usually the recommended way to do it.
Melody Karle: Thank you so much, Melody. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for re-recording it for addressing these questions, and for all this fantastic content. We really appreciate it absolutely. Thank you for inviting me and thank you for all the people who are watching it second time around, or the new people who watch the recording. I appreciate it.