Using WorldCat lists for Facebook fun

I don't use Facebook a ton. Being a GenXer, I tend to live on email and Twitter. I do enjoy it when I have time, and have re-connected to a bunch of old high school friends and folks who have moved away over the years.

I have noticed, though, that there seem to be a lot of games, polls and memes making the rounds of FB. I haven't played any of the dedicated FB games (like Mafia Wars). I am a gamer, but I tend towards Xbox with my 10-year old. Similarly, I haven't taken advantage of any of the "Which Greek God Are You Most Like?" type polls. Unless I understand the criteria, I'm not interested. I mean, come on... if you're going to tell me I'm more like Circe than Mercury, I need to know why.

I have, however, taken part in a couple of "memes" that friends have passed along. These usually take the form of a questionnaire delivered in a note, which the initiator tags with your name. You are encouraged to answer the question and pass it on to 10, 15, etc. of your friends.

The most recent couple of these I've been invited to reply to involved listing of favorite "Top 10" or "Top 15" things. What I did when responding was to create my replies as WorldCat lists to make them easier to share. You can see my WC lists for "Top 15 movies" and "Top 15 books."

For the "movies" list, I also made sure to add the editions of the movies that had cool "cover" art (although I guess it's "box" art for VHSs or DVDs), and then pointed folks to the "Covers Only" view of that list via the WC List link, as part of my FB reply.

A couple friends commented that they thought it was a much more interesting and helpful way to do a list like this. It was certainly more fun for me. I can even see, from the WC List page for each list, how many other WorldCat users have viewed my lists.

Sharing lists of "favorites" is fun. And WorldCat can add a bit of library flavor to the mix.