I discovered CPD23 fairly early, but through an email list, not social media. I've now started using social media for professional purposes, having previously used Facebook for family and friends.
Over the last week I've got going on LinkedIn, with 11 confirmed contacts and more under way. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, but it has enabled me to see what previous colleagues are now doing and assess any areas where current interests might overlap. It'll then be easy to contact them.
I've also joined some LinkedIn groups, but suspect they may feel too big and impersonal.
My Twitter page now tops Google search results for my name, but LinkedIn is only 10th, providing I use quotes around my name, otherwise it's ranked much lower. I'd prefer Twitter to be way down since it's experimental as part of this course. This looks like a disadvantage at the moment - especially when job-hunting!
Recently my family history society started using Facebook as a new channel for communicating between current and prospective members. I am the society's librarian so it's sort of a professional network. It does seem to be fostering a sense of community, but is not the best platform for answering research queries, which can be quite complex. The publicly archived email list is better, I think, as the answers can be found in Google searches by anyone with the same question in future.
While developing new networks and other sources, I still monitor my RSS feeds and email lists. With all these new channels to monitor, I will have to develop better techniques! I'll keep working at it.
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