Blog on international social networks

[Aaron Bowen]

Hello from a librarian in California :) I’ve posted a lot of content to my blog recently, and am trying to generate some good discussion on it. The topic? Social networking in international contexts — for example, how social networking services differ by country, and how people from diverse cultural backgrounds use social networking services differently. Individual discussions include:


Global social networking — Did you know that Asians have the largest social networking communities in the world?
http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=33


The African blogosphere – more extensive than you might think
http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=34


The African blogosphere part II – Kenya. Don’t look now, but the Kenyan blogosphere is vibrant and growing.
http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=35


Sex, Blogs, and the Great Firewall – Sexuality, censorship and subversion on the Web in modern China.
Part I: http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=38
Part II: http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=39


From São Paulo and London with Love – Comparing the sexuality and censorship in China discussed above to the same topics as they exist in Brazilian and British Web spaces.
http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=44


I will be adding further thoughts as time progresses, and I would love to have your views on any or all of these topics! Thanks for taking a look at the blog and for contributing your thoughts.

[Laurie Bridges]

This is a very interesting topic, especially because I recently met someone through Facebook, and she's in London and I'm in the US, and we are now planning on doing some academic research together. How cool is that?

[Aaron Bowen]

I know the feeling -- many of my colleagues are from all over the world, which adds a great international flavor to the work that I do :)

[RefLibrarian]

That is very cool! Library 2.0 on Ning has participants from all over the world. I really enjoy "virtually" meeting these colleagues. I have found new blogs to read and have connected with librarians who are also interested in library services to older adults.

[Connie Crosby]

Great idea. Different countries and cultures seem to catch on to different social network platforms. I hadn't thought about exploring others outside my own circle. I have had talks (using the video chat tool ooVoo) with someone from Italy working in Finland on social networking who says the social networks are very disjointed. People in the UK and France are active, but because of language barriers there is not the adoption rate we see in North America.

This surprises me since we always heard that Europeans learn 3 languages in school (English, French, German) in addition to their mother tongue, but perhaps that is not the case.

I talk a lot to people across North America (I am in Canada) as well as the UK and Australia. Would love to connect with those in other countries, too.

Cheers,
Connie

[Olga Koz]

Great ideas but too broad for me. On professional level I would like to know how social networking used by librarians of various countries and is it different?