Social Networking - The Game Changer

I'm curious to see where this one is headed since the presenter is from a vendor: OmniUpdate. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt though, they gave us some sweet mugs. :-) Not to mention that one of their guys said he likes my blog last night...yep, I'm famous. hahaha.

Ok, I'll start adding updates once we being, but on a side note, I hate that I'm missing LOL cats with santa, I mean Tony Dunn. ;-)

UPDATE 8:30 AM

Lance Merker of OmniUpdate tells us he's not here as a vendor. :-) He read my mind. hahaa

Social networking born around a campfire with the cavemen. Taking us thru a brief history of technology, starting with the wheel, maritime innovations, shipping, trains, planes, automobiles. and then the telegraph, phone, tv...communications innovations. broke loose with the digital age.

UPDATE 8:38 AM

Three killer apps on the net:

1. email
2. web
3. social networks

With social networks, the game has changed. Social networking to only get bigger. How did the students/prosp. students get so involved w/social networking? How'd we get here?

UPDATE 8:48 AM

Going thru a sample student: Ami. Born after net was invented, grew up with it, had a cell phone at middle school. Had own pc/laptop before high school. Best texter ever. haha. Can do under her desk. Has over 400 facebook friends. To her it's nothing new. It's just something she uses.

Giving us bits of the Pew: Teens & Social Media study.

• those that use social media, 91% to communicate w/friends
• 49% to make new friends

email is still a killer app, but how has its use changed? death reports of email are greatly exaggerated. only 14% teens use email daily IF using a social network.

• social networks are the new killer app.
• not just web-based (twitter, iphone, loopt)
• both private and public
• replace email
• replace chat
• replace blogs
• replace photo & video sharing

UPDATE 8:54 AM

Discussing public vs private social networks. Facebook: institutions have "pages" and "fans" not friends.
Can have rss feeds for your institution page on facebook.

Ning is getting huge for private social networks (highedweb2008.ning.com). Showing us some private ning sites for colleges. **note to self: free if has google ads. 20 bucks a year to take ads off.

UPDATE 8:59 AM

How can we have our students engage with our students? Old ways of advertising aren't sufficient: print, radio, tv, mailings, web...

What can we do right now?

1. assign responsibility: someone HAS to do it--marketing and managing it
2. participate.
3. connect everything. Lance says he'll show us how to do that...

UPDATE 9:03 AM

Magic of RSS feed. Use it to publish to facebook, homepage, blog, media, portals, sms text

Doing a demo, then says will have Q & A.

Using fake school Gallena University to create a facebook and ning page.

UPDATE 9:10 AM

Hmm...I have to say, no real "aha!" moments here. I think we understand everything he's told us so far. I guess I would have preferred more data, something to use as ammo when talking to admins/faculty about social networking, its importance and how we can get buy-in to have a central management for it. Don't get me wrong, he seems to be a champion for all of the above, but he's preaching to the choir. :-) We need to know how to convey this message to our admins and they respond to numbers.

He's setting up a Ning acct right now and tying all his sites together with rss.