Thing 12

Mixx is an awesome way to share stuff that you care about. I could totally see the library using it internally to spread important (or not) news rapidly, although I don’t think that it would help with productivity because we would spend time looking at it, reading what other people had posted… so we’d have to use it during our breaks if we wanted to.
Digg seems very similar to Mixx. People say that it’s been there longer than the other similar social-media sites, although I’d never heard of any of them. Digg allows you to create a profile, which I don’t think you can do with Mixx (at least they didn’t say so when I took the tour), and that makes sense if you want Digg to be part of your daily routine, to communicate with your friends, meet new people… The library could use it, of course, but I think that Mixx is more than enough for a workplace where pretty much everybody knows everybody.
Newsvine is more of the same. I kind of like it a little more than Mixx (which I prefer over Digg) if only because it looks more professional, like something that we would feel comfortable to use in the workplace.
Reddit looks intended for young people. I wanted to take the tour, so I clicked on the link that said “take the tour” and it took me to a page that didn’t explain much; it just told you some of the general information that you needed to start posting or reading news but it didn’t say anything about the different options that would allow you to configure the site to make to “yours”. The way they use to rate the comments on Reddit confirms that its users are mostly teenagers and/or young adults.
I hadn’t heard of any of these sites before, but after taking the tours and reading the comments people made about them, I would use Newsvine as my preferred social-media site. For me, it’s the most complete one and that’s something that makes me feel good and confident about it.