Fuzzy Content

I caught a good article for non profits using social networks to move forward. The article is great, but a quote inside of the article gave me some goose bumps. You’ve heard me say it before, but it’s nice to see coming out of other’s mouths:

“Give up some control. When you start letting the details out, those passionate people are going to comme up with own ideas about what you can do. Let them take those ideas and run with them. Resist the urge to take them over or tell them what would work better. Instead, point to them proudly”

There is no better essence of what participating in social networking on the Web can do for you. A thousand voices is stronger than one any day. Read Marnie’s post.

Many of you have heard of Blackboard’s social bookmarking initiative, Scholar. This new service allows the Blackboard portal to become one-to-many, rather than one-to-one. It connects all Blackboard institutions (or at least those with the latest upgrade), and gives faculty and students the ability to share academic resources with each other.

I attend several conferences a year and have seen the art of networking amongst peers and competitors. Now, the academic community has a tool to practice this activity as well.

Read their press release for more information.

For those in marketing (me being one of them), I hear many stories of frustration in building a visitor-centric Web site. You can control the message and presentation, but you will never be able to control where site readers enter the site, what sequence they move through pages, and when they decide to leave.
Web 2.0 (I know, I know) means that now I have even less control. Not only did I lose control over visitors on how they used my site. But now, I will see many visitors get information without even entering my domain. Syndication has allowed site content to become a collection of information that I, as a reader, review in the comfort of my own RSS aggregator (newsgator, myYahoo, etc).

As microformats continue to take hold of consistent content, this will even become more of the case. Sites and software are beginning to format their information (profiles, blog entries, events, and eventually course catalog information) following standard structures. This practice gives visitors an even wider platform to find information related to you.

The secret is to understand where people find information about you, then participate. In the “real” world, prospective students find information and build impressions of your institution without stepping foot in your admission office. But the more active you are in advertising, printed material, and high school visits, the better chance the information and impressions are accurate.

So, if you haven’t already, actively participate in Facebook groups. Submit your events on upcoming.org, and look for tools that help you gain exposure outside your .edu. You won’t have complete control over what your visitors are reading, seeing, and acting on, but you will better understand who and where people interact with you as an institution.

You know an idea is successful when large corporations get into the mix. Also, spin-offs of a great idea also tell me when the idea has arrived. In this case, we have social networks.

A history lesson is seeing Facebook geared toward educational communities, Friendster for dating (sort of), and MySpace to fill in the holes and allow companies to cover as individuals. LinkedIn has been highly successful because of their niche in professional development.

Welcome Disney to the mix. Xtreme Digital is geared toward pre-teens, pushing Disney content to those of interest. It’s early to tell if this will be a successful portal for Disney, or more importantly for the kids.

From Australia, FatSecret has been launched to help those trying to lose weight. It includes communities by diet or region, polling information, and friend networks.

Are these going the way of portals from 5-6 years ago? Not in my opinion. The failure of portals in their height of popularity was the need to be the next Yahoo. The difference for Disney and FatSecret is their focus. Disney, although overly commercial, stays in their sweet spot. FatSecret isn’t for everyone. One of Facebook’s failures, to me, is when they opened up the community to everyone. Although the number of users have grown immensely, I think they’ve lost a little of the close niche that they used to enjoy. Now, the only difference between Facebook and MySpace are policies and an innocent beginning.

Social networks are dependent on social policies. My personal friend network is by commonalities. I have friends who love hockey, I have friends in higher education, and I have friends that are technologically gifted. When they intersect, that is wonderful, but I would never mix groups.

Social networking is here to stay because of one word…focus. Find your communications vehicles that intersect with interests and you can use social networks to your advantage.

I did a presentation this week regarding Social Media in Higher Ed i thought I might as well post it. I think it is a pretty good primer to give to beginner to intermediate level people about social media in higher ed. I gave the presentation to a group of communications and marketing people on campus and they were very receptive and had lots of questions. People are still following up with me regarding it, so maybe we will get more going here on campus.

-Matt Herzberger 

I had a chance to attend SXSW earlier this month in Austin. The leaders of the Web converge every year on this conference, and it’s an opportunity to rub shoulders with these giants.

I took particular interest in the sessions that were discussing the direction and uses of the Web’s place on mobile devices. I’ve been a user of the Web on my treo, but that certainly doesn’t make me an expert.

I wasn’t alone. Surprisingly, my Web brethren see this as early on as well. During one particular session, a couple of questions were asked on the usage of the Web on their mobile device and the crowd’s reaction was sparing.

This is going to sound odd, but that question was asked to the wrong people. Although we are the most Web-savvy, in my opinion, we aren’t necessarily the ideal end users. As I walk across college campuses, through airports, and talk with my brothers (high school aged, college bound), I recognize that these are the people that rely on Mobile Web.

For teens and college students, MoSoSo (or Mobile Social Networking Software) like dodgeball and sociallight are becoming addictive applications on their cell phones. Beyond texting, it allows you to find friends. It allows you to see where people are in relation to you. Most importantly, it provides a constant connection between you and your friends. For these cell phone users, mobile Web means controllable communication. It’s opt-in, it’s instant, and it’s constant.

For the heavy travelers, common applications and communication are a plus (like email and chat), but local information must be accessible. Directions (I use GoogleMaps), local restaurants and activities, and flight status are the most common that I see. On the road, these people want to feel like they are not outsiders. The Mobile Web allows the same world of information a computer provides, but no tie to the laptop.

That’s the thing about Mobile Web. Although it’s not here for all of us yet, it’s here for a large demographic. Here are the handful of concepts Mobile Web must provide:

• Quick. For services on the Web, it must download fast. I can’t wait for a 300Kb page to load when all I care about is clickthrough navigation.
• Constant. Like dodgeball or twitter, it’s always on. I don’t need to keep logging in or refreshing. It is as much part of my phone as the phone itself.
• Convenient. I won’t think I need a service until I actually need it. If it is a pain to log in or register or download, it’s not a convenient service.
• Relevant. Location-based information is the most relevant for cell phone users. If I am at a conference, I want to see the schedule and nightlife (thank you sxsw.mobi). If I am looking for a restaurant, I better be able to punch in a zipcode or be picked up by GPS.
• Singular. A one-stop shop for all relevant services would be great, but that’s a world that is pretty far away. I want GoogleMaps to do one thing and Dodgeball to do another.
• Cheap or Free. Per-use service is only beneficial when it is unsuccessful, if that makes sense. If I love texting, I don’t want to pay for every message. One-time or monthly fees that are reasonable make me use services.

It’s still early on in Mobile Web, which brings opportunity. In three years, a cell phone is more a part of communication for people than computers…let’s find the right applications.

You may have caught this in University Business, but on Saturday, February 4th, Oklahoma Wesleyan University began auctioning off a year of tuition, including room and board, on the online auction giant, eBay.

Although this is admittedly to gain publicity for the institution, don’t write this off too quickly. Text messaging, IM, mall advertising, and counselor posters all fall under the same category…Be where students are. Now eBay puts college tuition in the same place.

I doubt this is the new way to pay for college, but I’d be surprised to see OWU as the last institution to do this. We, at Fuzzy, believe that college recruiting is guerilla marketing. We also believe that we (as higher education folks) no longer set all the rules. We play on a field that requires us to catch the attention of students, parents, and other key audiences. This is a great example of not playing by the traditional rules.
Follow the 7-day auction. As of this post (2/6 @ 11:30 CST), the top bid sits at $16,100.

Social content on the internet has reached a blistering pace. My head spins, but my eyes twinkle at the possibilities. For example:

For all of you who enjoy regular podcasts, you now have your favorites. I listen to about 4 or 5 podcasters on a regular basis. Some have daily podcasts, but others are for less frequent. For those everyday podcasts, I find it hard to catch up. But a service has been out there for a few months that caught my eye. Pluggd has Hear Here, which allows you to search podcasts for appropriate content. So, let’s say you are listening to Chris Pirillo, but find his hour-long daily program too much. You just want to know more about the new ChaCha search engine. Type in ChaCha, or “search engine” and it will show you where in the hour-long program that may be discussed. Brilliant! I’m not supporting their service, but if you use it and like it, let me know.

How does this relate to you? It is now more important than ever to expand your walls of the .edu site. If there are no services that push people to your site (besides standard Google searches), you are missing the boat. Your podcasts, blogs, and events need to be found in aggregators, microformat searches, and blog searches.

It’s a crowded marketplace…your content needs to rise to the top.

I ran across this article today on the Wired blog and just had to discuss.

As much as the next guy, I hate the term “Web 2.0″. It seems like everything these days is Web 2.0. When did it get here? Is it already here? If it were in a lineup, how would I pick it out? Did I invent it?

But that’s not enough…everyone is looking at the next big thing. Web 3.0 converges technologies. Web 4.0 is extensible markups great equalizer. Web 5.0 allows my dog to finally use the computer by barking signals and getting treats.

I rarely rant, but I just want people to use the Web the way they want to. For instance, I recently switched my personal site over to WordPress. And lo and behold, I’m on the road and need to update a page. With the trusty Blazer Web browser on my phone, I login, edit the page, and publish…just like that. I expected that I could do it…I did it…and I sat back and was marveled by it. That, my friends, is the Web.

I was reading an article the other day which got me to thinking about how useful Facebook can be to you school.

Any here are a few idea

Student Groups

Problem
Most colleges have students groups like AMA, BSC, blah blah blah Lots of acronyms. Anyways they usually have a site for the group lets say http://myschool.edu/ama. It sits on some random server that IT hates to touch. They provide no support for it. So each semester you have to find one student in an organization that can hack up some kind of html. The level of experience varies each semester so sometimes the site is great, sometimes not so go. Some times the last person to do the site drops off the face of the earth and doesn’t pass on login or general info about the site.

Solution
Use Facebook for student group sites. All the things that are commonly on student groups sites are available on Facebook. Forum, pics, officer listings, member lists. All with no need for knowledge of html. It stays consistant, easy to maintain, multiple admins.

Hurdle
I told people at my school about this, they said why dont we make a facebook for our school. *Counter* No that is making another thing to join. Much less something run by the school. We should learn from Walmarts attempt at a Facebook and PASS! Everyone is already on facebook or can get on if need be. Facebook is open to everyone so there is no barrier to entry.

Groups for School

You can have a group for your school in general as opposed to student groups mentioned above. *NOTE* You cannot have a profile for your school. You can however create a group for your school. This can be a way to get in touch with prospective students. Some schools are slow to adapt these sites, personally I am all for it. Facebook and Myspace can make connections with students that you may otherwise not hit. I have lots of students connected to my profiles and have been asked questions regarding admissions, classes and various other topics. You can also syndicate things such as your student blogs on facebook using “Notes”.

-Matt Herzberger