Thing 11: Social Media

I looked at all 4 suggested sites and found Mixx to be the most intuitive to use. Diggit was also pretty easy to navigate. I searched each site using keywords like "Welsh Corgi" "Arthurian Legend" "web 2.0" and "Everquest." Then I tried more obvious keywords like "Obama" and "economy." I then went on to "Library" as a key word.

In none of my searching did I find an article of interest that I hadn't already found using my RSS (Google Reader) or my regular news searching. I'm afraid I just do not get the point of these sites. I do not see how I could use them for home or work. Sorry.

And then I tried looking at the comments. Since no 2 people are going to agree 100 % of the time on 100% everything, I expected to see discussion and perhaps some disagreement. I saw some limited foul language and disrespect. I also noticed a lot of people expressing their own opinions, but noticed little of people thoughtfully "listening" to differing opinions before voicing what they thought. I was not comfortable with the quality of the "discussions" taking place via comment. I guess maybe I don't trust "popularity" to tell me what's important. Maybe it's that road less traveled thing.....

I guess if you're looking for what's popular, trendy, or outlandish these are the places to search. I can't say that I'll be using these tools, though.