CIL 2009 Day 1 - Library Facebook Apps

This was a fascinating session where a staff member from North Carolina State University explained what they had observed about the nature of Facebook apps and that they realized that for a Facebook application to be successful it needed to have a social element. They developed an app for scheduling study groups in the Library and then tested it against a small group of students. The surprising result was something to the effect of "This seems like it would be useful. Why would you put it on Facebook?" Basically, the students see Facebook as messy and chaotic and not somewhere they would go for this kind of useful thing. They are going to continue evaluating what, if anything, to do with Facebook, but so far there is no successful application strategy for libraries at the moment.