Social Networking 1

What do I think about social networking?
I have two conflicting opinions about it. One, is that I love it. Several different social networking websites have kept in touch, or at least knowledgeable about, friends with whom I would have otherwise lost contact. Even if I haven't spoken with my old college roommate for a year, I at least know where she's working, what her "relationship status" is, and what she looks like now. Suddenly I feel better about myself. A few college friends - now separately in Michigan, Idaho, New York and Washington D.C. - and I have also kept in touch by sending group messages through Facebook. This "thread" tool is great for letting everyone you want to know about your life know about it all at once. Facebook is also the medium through which I found out one friend's engagement and another friend's stroke - and how I've kept up on her recovery, which is going well.
My other opinion about social networking is, you guessed it, I hate it. The kind of communication through these sites is often polarizing - wouldn't I have rather heard about my friend's stroke from another friend in the old-fashioned social network, the phone? Certainly, I would have. Social networks give us the veil of keeping in touch and being inclusive without actually being so. Mass invitations to parties and well wishes for birthdays aren't the same as personal phone calls or cards or even emails, and we all feel it. MySpace - and text messaging too, I think - give us the opportunity to be lazy friends. I am guilty of it, for sure. Social networks are also a great medium for time wasting and unhealthy egoism, if that's your thing (and admit it, it is).
BUT... If my favorite thing about Facebook is keeping in touch with college friends, my favorite thing about MySpace is MUSIC. I think MySpace is a fabulous medium for advertising. I never buy a CD now without listening to a few of the band's songs on MySpace to make sure that I like it. I know bands and bars that book shows now exclusively through MySpace, and it works great. For a business or a group or a library, I think MySpace is a wonderful tool - free advertising, free website for offering information, and a great way to connect directly with fans, customers, patrons, what have you.
I read the arguments against groups/libraries using MySpace and Facebook and I thought they were poor. We don't want to intrude on teenager's spaces? People do scandalous things there? There are predators there? That sounds just as much like a reason not to go to college. Anywhere information is people create niches and there are bad things and things we don't agree with, but that's no reason not to participate in the general field of information, and that's what these websites are becoming.