While I do not have a Facebook or MySpace page, I have visited both sites and know several people, inclucing family members, who have pages on these sites. Privacy concerns have kept me from signing up, and, while I hear from my friends and colleagues about their advantages, so far, the disadvantages are prevailing.
As educators, I feel it is important to let students know the dangers of posting personal information, photographs, etc., on these social networking sites. This information can come back to haunt students when they apply to colleges or begin searching for a job. The three articles on online privacy I read for this module offer a great deal of cautionary material. The fact that Facebook retains a person's personal data, even if he elects to drop the service, should be communicated to all students. In addition, Facebook's latest proposal to simplify its privacy settings is giving rise to concern about a person's profile being accessible by default to anyone with access to the Internet.
That being said, our school has recently added a Facebook page, in addition to the school's website. I saw some excellent examples of libary Facebook pages in the material with this module, and I can see where a Facebook page, set up under a school and not a personal profile, would be another good tool for marketing the library's services.
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