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The pros, cons, and best practices of incorporating social networks into an alumni communications program.

Here's an interesting approach from Fresno State. They are using both YouTube and MySpace to build community. They initiated a video contest in order to generate interest. www.iamfresnostate.com

Social networking is here to stay and we need to be able to take advantage of some of the features, plus allow ourselves to understand the differences between the "old" ways of communication and what's happening in the Web 2.0 world.

So what about gleaning data from these social networking sites?

Here's a copy of a recent posting from a listserv asking some of the ethical questions about data collection:

"We have an alumna who started up a regional Yahoo Listserv after a successful networking event. She and I started it, and then with the assistance of the alumni office, she invited increasingly larger groups of alumni to participate. Occasionally, I will post information about events or other relevant information.
As new alumni join, they frequently give updated information about their employment and families. We see this as an excellent opportunity to update our database accordingly, but legal/ethical issues. We have consulted the College's legal advisors about this and will follow their advice which is to contact the individuals and ask if we can update their file accordingly.
Questions:
1) do you have an alumni-sponsored listserv? (as opposed to one that is offered and monitored by the institution)
2) If so, are you "on" it and do you collect relevant data off of it?
3) If you do collect data for their indivitual files, what exactly do you collect? strictly biographical data or more?
4) Do you keep the emails, too?
5) Have you raised the legal/ethical question with your legal council?"
This is both an ethical and a question about perception. Although the information is generally considered public, and anyone on one of the sites could access it .... Any comments?



brianwdowling
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hmmansfield MySpace Best Practices for Higher Education 0 Jul 6 2007, 5:29 PM EDT by hmmansfield
Thread started: Jul 6 2007, 5:29 PM EDT  Watch
Hello everyone,

I used to work with Tristan Davies at Drury University. He's obviously now moved on to Harvard, and I left Drury to start my own business helping nonprofits and universities successfully use MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Change.org.

I publish MySpace Best Practices for Higher Education and will be giving a presentation on how universities can successfully use MySpace to engage alumni at the Stamats Interactive Media Conference this November in San Diego.

Best Practices:
http://www.diosacommunications.com/myspaceforhighereducation.htm

If anyone needs any help, just drop me an email at heather@diosacommunications.com.

MySpace has a function called "Schools" where everytime you log-in to your MySpace profile it shows you what new almuni (and current students) have registered since the last login. All you have to do is send them a friend request. Thousands of your alumni are just clicks away... MySpace already organizes your alumni for you. The key is to design your MySpace to drive traffic to alumni webpages/sites you have on your official website.

For more info:
http://www.myspace.com/collegesanduniversities

A new client of mine:
http://www.myspace.com/commschool

There MySpace should be completed by 7/15/07.

Thanks!!
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