Troy Library Now on Facebook

Thanks to Technology Librarian Lauren Henderson, the Library now has a Facebook page. Drop by for a visit and become a fan. Since we are just starting, there is not much there, yet, so let us know what you would like to see. Write it on our wall.

Here at The Tech Desk, we have been working hard beefing up the Library's Internet presence. As I mentioned in a post about a technology unconference I attended, you can now follow us on Twitter (@tpltechnology). Soon you'll be able to find us on Flickr, too.

And we are getting ready to roll out our brand new website -- complete with gadgets and gizmos and all other cool stuff. Stay tuned.

Library of Congress Flickr Project A Success

This from Jessamyn West, via librarian.net:

"The Library of Congress has finished a report (full report and shorter summary in pdf) summing up what they’ve learned after the first nine months of their experimentation with Flickr. Here is an excerpt from the summary. Look at these numbers.

The following statistics attest to the popularity and impact of the pilot. As of October 23, 2008, there have been:

• 10.4 million views of the photos on Flickr.
• 79% of the 4,615 photos have been made a “favorite” (i.e., are incorporated into personal Flickr collections).
• More than 15,000 Flickr members have chosen to make the Library of Congress a “contact,” creating a photostream of Library images on their own accounts.
• 7,166 comments were left on 2,873 photos by 2,562 unique Flickr accounts.
• 67,176 tags were added by 2,518 unique Flickr accounts.
• 4,548 of the 4,615 photos have at least one community-provided tag.
• Less than 25 instances of user-generated content were removed as inappropriate.
• More than 500 Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) records have been enhanced with new information provided by the Flickr Community.

Between January and May 2008, the Library saw an increase in hits at its own Web site. For Bain images placed on Flickr, views/downloads rose approximately 60% for the period January-May 2008, compared to the same time period in 2007. Views/downloads of FSA/OWI image files placed on Flickr rose approximately 13%. Average monthly visits to all PPOC Web pages rose 20% over the five-month period of January-May 2008, compared to the same period in 2007. For additional information, see the Outcomes section in the full report.

Not only is that data good news about the project but being able to say “Hey when the Library of Congress opened up their photos to commenting and tagging, they only had to remove 25 inappropriate tags/comments out of 75K instances of user-generated content” thats a big deal."

Top 20 Social Networking Sites of 2008

What were the top social media sites of 2008?

According to ComScore, reported by Techcrunch, Blogger is number one with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors (up 44 percent). Facebook is on target to pass it soon with 200 million visitors (up 116 percent). MySpace is steady at 126 million visitors. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million visitors.

Writes Techcrunch: “While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.”

Below are the top 20 sites on ComScore’s social networking list.
1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)

Mumbai Tragedy Shows Rise of Internet Citizen Journalists

The tragic events in Mumbai this past week have “served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media,” according to Brian Stelter and Noam Cohen in their New York Times story, “Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses of Mumbai Attacks.”

Stelter and Cohen write:

“At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.

Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world — whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage… or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Noah Shachtman, posting on wired.com on the first day of the attacks, shows the breadth of coverage by such citizen journalists:

“First-hand accounts of the deadly Mumbai attacks are pouring in on Twitter, Flickr, and other social media.

Twitter has fresh news every few seconds, on Mumbai, Bombay, #Mumbai, and @BreakingNewz.

"Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also Metro cinema next door," tweets mumbaiattack. "Blood needed at JJ hospital," adds aeropolowoman, supplying the numbers for the blood bank.

A Google map of the attacks has already been set up. So has a shockingly-current Wikipedia page, which features a picture of one of the gun-toting attackers.

The local bloggers at Metblogs Mumbai have new updates every couple of minutes. So do the folks at GroundReport. Dozens of videos have been uploaded to YouTube. But the most remarkable citizen journalism may be coming from "Vinu," who is posting a stream of harrowing post-attack pictures to Flickr.”

To me, this is the web’s social networking at its best: democratic, grassroots, newsworthy, and life-changing.

Compfight - A Great Flickr Search Engine

I love using Flickr, the photo posting and sharing site that is owned by Yahoo!, but I've always felt its search feature was lackluster at best. Today, I've found a great search tool that surpasses the one provided by flickr and is free and easy to use. The name of this search engine is called Compfight and it searches flickr for both commercial and Creative Commons approved images in an easy to use interface.

Some of the other great features of the site are:

• The ability to search by tag or by all text
• The ability to search for images that only have their original sizes
• Compfight also provides a "Safe Images" only filtering tool that is helpful for searching for safe for work images only.

Compfight is free to use and a great way to find that perfect picture to match your blog post or research paper.