There’s something wonderful about beginning something on a negative note. You’ve messed it up already, Tim. Jerk took a hammer to my brand new Honda. But really, when a social networking site is mentioned, they bring dents into the conversation. I’m certain that the tendency for academic institutions to shy away from MySpace is directly related to the moral depravity that accompanies social networking sites.
There’s some sick stuff on Myspace
I will only expand on this point with a relevant story and then dip into the main idea. A friend’s MySpace account used specifically to connect with students in a convenient way sent messages to all of his friends directing them to buy male enhancement products. So the experience for a friend of his account was as follows: “My Admission Counselor just messaged me, very cool.” “Ok, Wow. This is inappropriate.”
Technology has calloused us, and I think this is a good thing. Students who received my buddy’s message were not the least bit offended because they know, as we know, that he wasn’t the origin of this message. We all receive spam, and we’ve all had accounts commandeered for the purpose of transferring money to Nigerian bank accounts or male pattern baldness prevention.
The front line is not a safe place
These spamming situations are only the top of the pile for institutions questioning the validity of social networking sites. The Big Guys question the effectiveness of the social networking phenomenon harnessed for recruitment, mission casting or spreading the word.
Certainly there are solid reasons for hesitancy. (I would love to hear your–or your higher ups–objections to the use of MySpace and Facebook for recruiting.) But I write to open doors. I want exploration and discovery though risk may follow. My institution started out by putting as much as possible out there in a web browser and trimming the trees as we observed what worked and what didn’t.
I agree with the article that I linked to earlier in the post, so next I’ll unpack my thought bundle of how to do MySpace the right way.
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