Thing 12: Social Media Sites

I shared an article from the New York Times, SteamPunk Movement Moves Between Two Worlds with Mixx.

While I was playing around with Mixx, I searched with the key word "books" and out of the top ten results two were about girl's taking off their clothes and one involved "sexy bikini photos." This illustrates my biggest doubt about these sites. If everybody is voting on the best articles, videos, etc. they may appeal to only the lowest common denominator. That sounds so very snobby, but right now I can't think of a better way to put it. Maybe I'm missing the point, but after looking quickly at Mixx, Reddit, Digg and Newsvine it looks to me like a lot of the news is frivolous and sensational, and I don't know how those sites would fit in to my library work life. Thumbs down!