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According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, social networking has become more mainstream among adults. That includes me, at least the last time I checked the crow’s feet in my 10x magnification mirror.

According to the folks at Pew, the number of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% four years ago, to 35% now. That’s amazing, and encouraging. I have conducted a number of workshops on the subject of social media, and I still get attendees who look like deer in the headlights when I talk about Facebook, LinkedIn, and the whole sphere of social networking and social bookmarking.

On the other hand, I get plenty of people — of all ages — who are eager to dive right in.

Although those of us over the age of 18 stumbling through the social networks should be proud of ourselves for trying, don’t get cocky. We’re still light-years behind those lucky kids between the ages of 12 to 17. A whopping 65 percent of those crazy kids have an online profile on one of the big social networks — Facebook and MySpace, primarily.

It seems that the older we get, the less use we seem to have for social networks.

According to the Pew study, 75% of adults ages 18-24 use these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. “At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young,” the study says.

Other age groups and their use of social networking sites:

– 57 percent of those aged 25 to 34

– 30 percent of those ages 35 to 44

– 19 percent of those aged 45 to 54

– 10 percent of those aged 55 to 64

Another interesting finding: We adults use social networks for professional and personal reasons, and we often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.

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Fuelmyblog and Blurb are teaming up this month to create a global cookbook. Any blogger who has joined up with Fuelmyblog as a member can contribute a traditional recipe (they prefer recipes that are generic to your location in the world) and photos to be included in their Global Cookbook. Fuelmyblog says their membership represents just about every country in the world.

At the top of this post, you can see one page from Fuelmyblog’s last book venture, “The Human Behind The Avatar,” also published on Blurb.

All bloggers need to do is send in the recipe and photos taken of the completed dish, and Blurb will actually compile the book. Blurb is a web company that allows anyone to create customized books by downloading their free software and then creating books. Blurb is known for the high quality of their books. The actual printed version of your book is what you pay for.

Recipes should be sent to: cookbook@fuelmyblog.com. You need to include your name for credit and the URL of your blog. The top 10 recipes in the book get a free copy of the cookbook from Blurb. Fuelmyblog members can also get a 10% discount off their first purchase from Blurb.

Hurry to participate. The deadline is Nov. 30 and the cookbook will be ready in time for the holidays.

Last year, the FMB community created a book called “The Human Behind The Avatar” (you can take a look here). It was a great initiative and we have had hundreds of great comments.

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OK — this is interesting.

I’m not much of a Twitter user, sending Tweets there a few times a week and scanning the people and groups I follow (Grammar Girl, PROpen Mic, MakeUseOf and a few others) for interesting article and posting ideas.
But last night, I decided to search for Twitterers to follow. My first addition was Barack Obama, who I thought would be a great friend to have on Twitter. Sure enough — less than an hour later, “he” was following me. Or his campaign people were following me, anyway.
This morning, I woke up, signed on to my email account, and saw a notice that Obama Girl was now following me on Twitter. OK — that makes sense. A bit unusual, but now I’m following her as well.

But then — by lunchtime, SarahPalinFeed was following me. Now how the heck did that happen? Somehow, I felt violated.

The beauty of Twitter is that you don’t have to follow someone back.

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I know I’m dating myself here, but I don’t remember ever having a cool librarian as a kid. Instead, the librarians I knew had pursed lips, shushed people for a living, and slept with the Dewey Decimal System.

Not today. Librarians are Twittering, Facebooking, blogging, wiki-ing, and definitely not sleeping with the Dewey Decimal System.

If you want proof, take a look at the Library page of the Online Education Database, which currently contains reviews of 1,081 programs from 86 accredited online colleges. There, you’ll find tons of references written by and for librarians about using social media in libraries around the country.

Here’s what the Library page says about Twitter, for example:

Twitter is a free communication and social networking tool which allows you to convey short messages of up to 140 characters to your circle of friends via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client. Messages appear not only within your profile on Twitter, but are sent to your community of followers who have signed up to receive your updates. Often referred to as microblogging, this new phenomenon has caught on with over 300,000 users on Twitter alone including Barack Obama and John Edwards. Twitter recently made the cut as one of Time’s Best 50 Websites of 2007. Librarians are using it to communicate at conferences and events and to keep up with developments in the field, and libraries have begun using it to promote their services.

Among their listings are librarian-only applications and networks like:

Shakespeare High Cafeteria: This online tribute to Shakespeare features active discussions about Shakespeare news, book clubs, a creative writing center, “staff lounge,” study help and teaching ideas.

Readers Read: Browse forum topics like publishing industry, general fiction, mystery/thriller, children’s books and nonfiction.

TeacherLibrarianNing: Educators and librarians get together on this network, where you can join groups, post photos, upload videos and more.

The Shifted Librarian: Librarians connect through this blog about library news, trends and of course, books.

Librarian Facebook Application: This Facebook app connects you to other librarians who can answer your search questions.

They also list a number of social media sites for librarians and book-lovers, including:

Shelfari: This blog about books and book collecting has a MySpace page and a Facebook application.

GoodReads: Keep track of what you and your friends are reading through this online networking site.

BookJetty: BookJetty lets users organize, rate and review books and even look up books in the site’s database of over 300 libraries around the world. Users also get a blog that lets them show off a “bookshelf” to friends.

MySpace Books: This ultimate social networking site has a page just for books, connecting readers, authors and those in the book industry.

Books iRead: Another Facebook app that lets you rate, review, and share books you’ve read.

You can also catch a number of 21st century posts on the site, including these:

50 Ways to Use the Wii In Your Library

100 Essential Firefox Add-Ons for Librarians

e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students

100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better

Need any more proof that librarians are cool? I don’t think so.  Now shush!

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Some of you have emailed me asking about online press releases and the companies out there that provide this service. I have done some research, but let me preface this by explaining that many of these companies primarily serve corporations, tech companies and agencies. While I have seen some online press releases created by non-profits, they are in the minority. And these companies tend to be on the expensive side — fair warning.

An alternative to spending big bucks for the services of some of these companies is to simply create your own online press releases, placing them on your web site (if you have a site with a content management system), inserting some social media code that permits readers to give your release more visibility, adding links to any other relevant sites for research purposes, and emailing the local media with links to your releases.

I have just begun doing that, and urge you to see one small example here. This particular example includes related links and I have added a sharethis button for promoting the release on social bookmarking sites. Sharethis is easy to obtain by simply going onto their website and saving the code for their button.

Now, let’s talk about online press release services and the companies that provide them. If I don’t provide a price, it’s because I couldn’t find a price on their website — a sure sign that you might be spending serious bucks:

1. PRNewswire — one of the big players in the online press release business, PRNewswire is used by large companies around the world.  Although I understand their prices are pretty steep, PRNewswire provides a “Nonprofit Toolkit” that you can purchase.

2. eReleases — Another pretty extensive service, which can include writing your press releases, sending them out via database distribution to media outlets, and submitting them to social media. eReleases claims a national press release distribution list of 17,500 sources. The cost? A mere $399 for a press release of 500 words or less.

3. PRleap — A much less extravagant distribution site, which provides many of the services offered by the more well-known companies at an affordable cost — $49 per release.

4. i-Newswire – Finally, an actual free press release website. You can use their template to enter a press release, but understand that you cannot include links in the basic release. For $25 per release, you can upgrade to publish “featured” releases with all the bells and whistles.

5. PRBuzz — For $99 per release, you can easily get online press releases, complete with links, onto this site. PRBuzz also has subpages just for Education releases.

6. OpenPR — This is a fully free press release website that features an easy content tool to enter press release information. With 47,000 releases on the site, it’s one of the smaller players. But you’ll find some Education releases on the site, mostly from education service companies and some colleges.

Remember that some of these sites do offer regional press release distribution services, whihch will drastically reduce your price. If you’re strictly zoning your releases for local distribution, inquire about this option.

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So I’m finally being listed on Technorati, after many false starts and apparent system problems on their end. I hope some of you will visit me over there and I hope to get a Technorati button on this blog soon. Check out my
Technorati Profile.

Here’s why: I thought no one was reading my blog because very few people have commented on my posts. Yes, here and there I’ll hear from complete strangers who like my suggestions or who write that they’ll try something I’ve mentioned on the blog. Not one of my friends, colleagues or family members have commented and I’m shy about bothering people with spam emails.

Still, I was curious about whether anyone in the world reads my blog or even opens my blog. So I signed up for Google Analytics to get reports about its use. Egomaniac that I am, I now find myself opening my reports daily. Here’s what I learned just two days after signing up: 93 unique visitors (meaning not me)  had taken a peek at my blog, with the vast majority of them being directed by bookmarking sites or by links elsewhere on the Web. Cool. Of those people, 83% were first-time visitors, which for little old me is awesome.

The best feature of Analytics is the “map overlay”:

This map shows where all my U.S. visitors hail from, with the dark green states representing the largest number of visitors and the lighter green states representing smaller numbers. So naturally, in the U.S., most of my hits came from New York (upper right corner, folks). But I still had a handful of hits from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and so on. And this is just the U.S. map. I also had folks visiting from nine other countries, including the U.K., India, Slovenia, Singapore, the Netherlands and Canada.

Now, I know that the world’s most popular bloggers and Technorati wunderkinds are chuckling at my measly 93 visits. But that’s OK. Because I’m pleased with my vain, Newbie self.

Every item is in the small box next to the date, and direct links to those items are in blue. Check it out and see if it works for you.

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