by Rob Paterson
September 14, 2010 at 7:29 pm · Filed under
Dalhousie University, Facebook
When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks – his reply was ‘That’s where the money is? So for universities that want to communicate with their students – Facebook might be the place to go - because that’s where the students are.
It seems obvious – but a quick look at several universities have reminded me how hard this is for many of them – they have to give up control of the channel.
I first went to my old alma mater Oxford - they have a large following with over 60,000 “Friends” but I noticed one big thing – the site is filled with spam. So I looked to see if my college Christ Church had a Facebook site – no. The Choir has a private site but there is nothing at the College level where real life at Oxford takes place.
The ideal Facebook site that I have found that shows a very good interaction – is at Dalhousie in Halifax Nova Scotia. They have 4,666 fans and the site is very healthy. I have noticed that as soon as a question is asked – the moderator is there with the best answer . They are topical and on time too – when Hurricane earl dropped by the other day – much of Halifax and Dal lost power – the Moderator had a real time response to the breaking news.
My sense is that the quality of the moderation is the secret to a healthy site . The Oxford site seems to have little or no moderation and makes announcements but does not reply to questions.
This is just a toe in the water post – please tell me more about what other universities are doing with Facebook.
by Rob Paterson
July 26, 2010 at 7:10 am · Filed under
Adoption, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking
On July 9, the PM announced on a video with Mark Zuckerberg that the UK government will use social media to get connected to the British people. Well it has started with an ideal sector – travel!
Here the Foreign Office and the citizen connect and in time will create I think an unbeatable site where all you need to know can be found out – and where when bad things happen immediate action can be taken.
I think that we are seeing a new future for governments. Until now government sites had been slow, hard to use and dull. Until now governments had often banned the use of social media inside. But this model offers governments of all types the ability to be fast – easy to use and effective. Also to be very cost effective!
The barrier of course is culture. But with HM Gov in the lead it will be hard to say that “we can’t do this”.
What area would you like to see where government uses social media like this?
by Rob Paterson
July 9, 2010 at 7:37 am · Filed under
Adoption, Facebook, Social Media
The interview is staged – but the meaning is really important – no going back now.
I see no excuse anymore for government not to explore the use of social media to engage better with the public
by Bill Ives
June 7, 2010 at 3:26 am · Filed under
Facebook, Social Media, Twitter
I have been writing about some of the interesting Retreveo studies (see last year’s Study of Social Media Addiction from Retrevo). The latest Retrevo Gadgetology study asked people whether or not they found it too tempting to spy on someone else’s email. They discovered that 38% those under 25, in a dating relationship have “snooped” on their boyfriends or girlfriends messages. Unfortunately, 10% of that age group who “snooped” discovered that the other person was unfaithful and ended up breaking off the relationship. When they expand the group to include everyone, the percentage of email snoopers goes down to 28%.
While couples in a dating relationship snoop slightly more than married couples, 36% of couples in a committed relationship (spouses and partners) indicated they check emails or call histories without their significant other’s knowledge. Compared to the 10% of dating couples who discovered infidelities only 3% of this group in committed relationships discovered they were being cheated on, still not a good result.
Is this high level of personal spying a reflection of a lack of trust or the tempting curiosity facilitated by the ease of checking things out? Is it related to the social media addiction I wrote about before? What would you do?
Do things shift when you move into the enterprise? What should your company do? Does company security and compliance issues warrant looking at employee emails?
by Rob Paterson
January 14, 2010 at 4:59 pm · Filed under
Facebook, NPR, Twitter
Once again – social media such as Twitter are ahead of all other sources.
Here is how the man, Andy Carvin, behind NPR’s brilliant use of these tools is harvesting the last 3 years of work to build the system so that it can help so much.
NPR has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to using social media to do great reporting. So when we saw that they’d created a Twitter list of people tweeting from Haiti, we wanted to know: How’d you figure out those folks were legit?
In the following interview, NPR’s social media strategist Andy Carvin tells us not only how the network is using Twitter and Facebook to find compelling angles and new sources for stories (like this one and this one), but also why you can’t just jump on a social network after disaster strikes and expect it to pay dividends.
BayNewser: When did you decide to create this list and how did you figure out who to include on it?
Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist, NPR Social Media Desk: This isn’t the first time we’ve done this in response to a disaster. In the days and hours leading up to Hurricane Ida last fall, people were concerned it was going to be a bit of a mess, so I quickly put together a Twitter list of local bloggers, local news sources, local broadcasters and others, just as a way of monitoring what theywere talking about. None of us had a sense of where the storm was going to go and how bad it was going to be, but at least this was a handy list both for NPR staff as well as the public at large.
An hour or two after the earthquake in Haiti was reported, I decided to do exactly the same thing again. It wasn’t a big topic of debate. It was just a natural step in helping our reporters and producers do research on Twitter.
The full interview is here
